Filmmaker Jen Muranetz chronicles the 2020-2021 Canada’s Fairy Creek old-growth protests – the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history – in the documentary film Fairy Creek. The film will world premiere at the 2024 Planet in Focus International Film Festival on October 17, 2024 at the Paradise Theatre in Toronto. Ahead of the premiere, Cinema Politica has acquired the film’s distribution rights.

In Fairy Creek, director Jen Muranetz documents the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, creating a searing portrait of contemporary environmental activism, bearing witness to the lengths activists are willing to go to protect British Columbia’s last old growth forests. With unique insider access, the team behind Fairy Creek follows the Ada’itsx (Fairy Creek) blockade from its early inception to its bittersweet ending through the lens of an ensemble cast of blockade vanguards and those who oppose them. Employing in-the-trenches cinema vérité, the film introduces spirited environmentalists embroiled in a series of often violent altercations with loggers and RCMP, all while trying to stop old-growth logging in the untouched Fairy Creek valley. The activists show incredible dedication to their cause, while having compelling internal debates about whose voices are prioritized in the movement. By documenting this significant and contentious juncture in time, Fairy Creek calls attention to a much larger conversation: what does it take to find common ground in the fight for a climate-just future?

“The protests at the Fairy Creek blockade were record-breaking, with nearly 1,200 people arrested. It attracted tens of thousands of people and a lot of media attention worldwide. Our team arrived at Ada’itsx (Fairy Creek) in early 2021 as the first film team on the ground. We embedded ourselves into the blockade culture, spending several months building relationships with our subjects and developing the story. This early pursuit granted us intimate access to the characters. A tight security culture maintained amongst the blockaders meant that our access remained unique to our film, even after other members of the media showed up on the frontlines,” says Muranetz. “With strong experience working on frontline climate-focused documentary films, our key creative team created an observational and raw cinematic language; a fly-on-the-wall approach that places viewers in intimate proximity to the film’s characters and central tension, leaving those watching feeling stirred, conflicted, and attuned to the larger complexities in movements of resistance.”

In Fairy Creek we meet Shawna ‘Bushpig’ Knight a land defense activist with Secwépemc First Nations ancestry, Bill Jones an Elder from the local Pacheedaht First Nation, and Kati George-Jim an Indigenous youth leader with relations from the nearby T’Sou-ke First Nation, who prioritizes Indigenous sovereignty over settler activism in the fight for these ancient trees who she calls her relatives. We also follow a group of five blockaders protesting from the canopies of old-growth trees, and Mike McKay, a forestry mill owner who takes us inside his logging operations, explaining how old-growth logging is an essential part of B.C.’s economy. The film also features an array of other characters that the team meets at the frontline of the blockade.

Filmed in Port Renfrew, Victoria and Southern Vancouver Island, BC and in Montreal, QC, FAIRY CREEK is directed and produced by Jen Muranetz (What About Our Future?) and produced by Sepehr Samimi (Light Through The Blindfold) who is also the director of photography. Executive producers are Mark Achbar (The Corporation, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media), Neal Livingston and Mitchell Steinke. The film was edited by Rafi Spivak (Raised to be Heroes, Kingsway) and Liam Sherriff (Physician, Heal Thyself). The composer is Amine Bouzaher and story advisor is Nettie Wild (KONELINE: Our Land Beautiful, FIX: The Story of an Addicted City).