Cambium – Films – Visions du Réel

Maddi Barber & Marina Lameiro
Spain | 2024 | 44 min
World premiere
Languages : Basque, Spanish
Subtitles : English, French

In an attempt to reclaim pasture for their cattle, the inhabitants of an ecovillage in Navarre decide to cut down a pine grove planted as part of a state-funded reforesting initiative. In this fierce and sensory work, the filmmakers capture an adversarial process which uses deforestation techniques to transform a territory.

Maddi Barber’s previous two films (Above 592 Metres, VdR 2019, and Land Underwater, VdR 2020) denounced the changes in the landscape caused by the construction of the Itoiz dam in Navarre. This time, along with Marina Lameiro, she explores the opposite movement: the reclaiming of an area in the Acre Valley, where pines were planted in the 1960s as part of a state forestry programme. In order to re-establish their former grazing meadows, the inhabitants of the eco-village of Lakabe decide to cut down one of these pine forests. Cambium – which refers to the cell layer that ensures a tree’s growth – records this process. An animistic dialogue with the “spirits” of the suspended forest gives way to the brutality of machine-led deforestation, followed by the slow, collective (re)development of the space. By using a combination of film and CGI images, the directors engage in a profoundly poetic and political reflection into the ambiguity inherent in the use of violent technological methods - elsewhere responsible for widespread destruction - to ensure the restoration of an ecosystem.

Emmanuel Chicon

Maddi Barber
Cambium, 2024
Alas / Tierra, 2022
Paraiso, 2021
Gorria, 2020
Urpean Lurra, 2019
592 Metroz Goiti, 2018
Yours Truly, 2018

Marina Lameiro
Cambium, 2024
Paraiso, 2021
Dardara, 2021
Young&Beautiful, 2018