North American Premiere
In 2018, police unlawfully evicted treehouse-dwelling environmental activists protesting deforestation in Hambach Forest. Embedded among the activists was film student and journalist Steffen Meyn, who had been documenting the resistance movement for two years. He tragically fell to his death during the police raid. Three of his friends and fellow students compiled the footage he shot over two years to create a documentary chronicling the overlap of the personal and political. Lonely Oaks blends immersive, observational documentary at its finest (Meyn’s footage was filmed with a head-mounted 360° camera), with a meta-commentary of interviews with activists from Hambach Forest. It explores a wide range of perspectives, often contradictory, as it refuses to fall into reductive binaries or sloganeering, instead offering a remarkably nuanced approach to knotty, complex political issues, questioning and probing the effectiveness and necessity of direct activism, anarchism, democracy, violence, ultimately asking whether a cause is ever worth dying for. A powerful, provocative documentary that forces you to reckon with your own personal and political commitments.
Community Partner
Germany
2023
Spectrum
In English and German with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Melanie Andernach, Knot Losen
Screenwriter
Fabiana Fragale, Kilian Kuhlendahl, Jens Mühlhoff
Cinematography
Carina Neubohn, Steffen Meyn
Editor
Ulf Albert
Original Music
Antonia de Luca, Caroline Kox
Directors
Fabiana Fragale
Italian-Swiss filmmaker Fabiana Fragale was born in Zurich in 1994. She has been a resident of Cologne since 2015 and is a student at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her documentary and fictional works deal mostly with anti-capitalist and intersectional feminist themes. In 2018 she founded the art collective Polsprung.
Kilian Kuhlendahl
Kilian Kuhlendahl graduated from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in 2017 and has since worked in various narrative formats as director and author such as film, audio book and graphic novel. As a member of the Polsprung collective, Kilian creates multi-perspectival spatial installations and performances.
Jens Mühlhoff
Jens Mühlhoff was born 1991 in Wuppertal, and studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne from 2011 – 2018. His works as an artist often investigates and deal with public and semi-public space and thus explore the everyday realization of politics. For several years he has worked as a director and writer on various film productions and as artistic director for independent art projects.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
It Was Just an Accident
Having offered some late-night assistance to a stranger in the wake of an auto accident, a mechanic grows convinced that he recognizes the supposed stranger’s voice as that of his torturer during a grueling prison spell.
L'Étranger
Recreating 1940s Algeria in vivid, high contrast black and white cinematography, L'Etranger is erotic, enigmatic and brutal in equal measures, a masterful screen version of Albert Camus's insoluble classic of existential alienation.
Sentimental Value
A once-revered director crashes back into his family’s lives, eager to recruit his daughter for a film role. When she declines, he finds a new muse in an eager but unpolished Hollywood star, sending his botched reconciliation spiraling into chaos.
The Chronology of Water
Kristen Stewart's fearless directorial debut is based on the best-selling memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch (Imogen Poots), a chronicle of her abusive childhood, traumatized adulthood, and escapes through swimming, drugs, sex, and ultimately writing.