Fuck for Forest

As early as the late 1960s, opponents of the Vietnam War were convinced that free love could be an effective means against violence. Their slogan Make love, not war has become so etched in the collective memory that it is still invoked today at demonstrations and other anti-war actions. The activists of Fuck for Forest also want to make the world a little better by making love. The NGO, founded in Norway in 2004 by Leona Johansson and Tommy Hol Ellingsen and now headquartered in Berlin, does not limit itself to slogans. Rather, they want to put their ideals into practice directly with the help of sex. To this end, they offer pornographic pictures and videos on the Internet, for the consumption of which the user must pay or offer his own pictures. The sales then benefit various environmental protection projects.

The members of the group live in a world all of their own, which is strange, a little crazy and perhaps completely incomprehensible to outsiders, however good their ambitions may be. This is where Polish filmmaker Michael Marczak comes in with his documentary Fuck for Forest. He accompanied the group for a few months, first without, then later with a camera. He offers the viewer a very honest, interesting and entertaining insight into the life and work of the NGO, accompanies them on various actions and shows how people react to these neo-hippies. At the same time, the film also reveals the rejection by their own family, which in one case even led to a complete break with their parents - a high price the activists have to pay for their ideals.

Marczak deliberately refrains from direct interviews and only underlines his observations with a factual and very insightful voice-over commentary. By doing so, he skillfully avoids making it seem as if the protagonists are being paraded around in whatever manner. Sure, it does seem a little amusing to watch someone walk past flowers and plants and talk about how unhappy they are. And even a very special cellar performance seems a little strange. But Marczak's production manages even in such moments that the viewer does not find the whole thing ridiculous or reprehensible, but develops a certain understanding for the goals of the group and for their worldview.

This in itself is very interesting and worth watching. But the documentary really gets good when the friends set off into the deepest Amazon forests to buy a piece of land for the indigenous people living there with the money they've raised from their pictures and videos. Here ideals and reality collide in a surprising as well as painful way, giving the film a whole new level of meaning. In the end, Fuck for Forest is much more than a simple portrait of an unusual group, but a universal story about how difficult it is to uphold even the best ideals against all odds. A sometimes amusing, sometimes moving, always entertaining and interesting documentary that can be recommended not only to viewers who have an interest even in unusual kinds of environmentalism. Worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp