Slamdance Film Festival
Director: Mattia Colombo
Italy/59 min/US Premiere 

Moving from fantastic visuals of forests and trees to loggers and woodcutters to wood carvers and wood workers and all the way past the lumber industry, Trees That Walk follows the path of wood as it’s cut down, cut up, shaped and turned into lumber for homes, works of art, musical instruments and so much more. The film is incredibly pleasing visually and the music, my god, the music couldn’t fit more perfectly—using woodwinds and string instruments (made from wood of course), a haunting yet glorious effect is created throughout the film. The film closes with what is most important when it comes to trees and nature: Accountability. It focuses specifically on a movement to protect the trees of Gezi Park in Turkey, but the sentiment of how much more should and could be done by the human race is clear. With the amount of waste and devastation caused by the people of the world, the deforestation, the thoughtless destruction—something needs to be said about the impact we as humans have on not just trees, but on nature in general. That message from the film came off slightly smaller than perhaps it could have been—especially with the film opening with and repeating a metaphor describing humans as “trees that walk.” We use trees for so much in our lives, and we should be doing more to protect them and preserve them. –John Ford