Hot Docs

If A Tree Falls: A Story Of The Earth Liberation Front

SCREENINGS

Tue, May 3 7:00 PM Cumberland 3	Rush Tickets
Thu, May 5 4:30 PM TIFF Bell Lightbox 3	Buy Tickets

85 MINUTES | USA | LANGUAGE: ENGLISH | CANADIAN PREMIERE | RATING: PG

In 2001, two arson incidents destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of deforestation facilities in Oregon. The headlines blazed with terrorist accusations; the FBI classified the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an eco-activist group, as its number one domestic terrorist threat and launched Operation Backfire, leading to fourteen arrests, and cracking what was probably the largest ELF cell in America. If a Tree Falls reveals an unlikely man behind the terrorist verdict: Daniel McGowan, a mild-mannered, middle-class citizen earning a master’s degree in acupuncture. Pushed to extreme action in the name of the environment, Daniel must confront the integrity of his own convictions at the risk of spending the rest of his life in prison. With remarkable access to the activists, the prosecutors and the detectives involved, Oscar-nominated director Marshall Curry (Street Fight) contemplates difficult questions and finds no easy answers. A Sundance winner, this is an unsettling, thought-provoking, and sympathy-shifting film. Samara Chadwick

Subjects : Activism & Activists, Crime & Punishment, Ecology & The Environment, Terrorism & The War on Terror

Co-presented with Planet in Focus.