By: Ashima Shukla, Staff Writer
The year is 2025, and the world is in chaos: marked by economic instability, growing authoritarianism, ecological collapse, and an ongoing global erosion of human rights. In this moment, Fairy Creek arrives not just as a documentary but as an urgent cultural intervention and a powerful reminder that resistance is still alive. Like water seeping through stone, it moves steadily. Shaping. Persisting. Refusing to disappear.
Directed by Jen Muranetz, this powerful film tells the story of Ada’itsx (Fairy Creek valley), one of the last remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. In what became the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, activists, land defenders, and community members came together to set up blockades on Pacheedaht First Nation territory against logging operations by the Teal-Jones lumber corporation. Nearly 1,200 demonstrators were forcefully detained by the RCMP until the Supreme Court eventually rejected an extension on further legal action taken against the protestors, and old-growth logging was deferred for two years.
This film breathes with the spirit of the land and the people protecting it, and Muranetz offers a meditation on complexity, contradiction, and care. Opening with aerial shots of the forest, it invites viewers in, as light gently sifts through the ancient branches and birds chirp in distant conversation. There is something reverent in the cinematography; it speaks to our souls. But then, a rupture. The piercing growl of machinery disrupts the stillness, and we become witness to grief unfolding in real time.
Among its many strengths, what I find most admirable is its commitment to complexity. It doesn’t flatten this resistance into a binary of heroes and villains. Instead, we are invited into its complicated and sometimes contradictory emotional terrain. We see people in all their multitudes: angry, exhausted, crying, building barricades, making tea. There is rage but also laughter, vulnerability, and moments of surprising tenderness. This, the film reminds us, is the texture of real movements: messy, tender, full of both hope and heartbreak.
Yet there is also a kind of reverence for what cannot be saved but must still be honoured. In one unforgettable scene, the forest becomes the central voice. As the injunction is passed and protestors are removed, we see a tree being cut. Then another. Then another. And another. We wait for the silence, but it doesn’t come. Instead, we hear and watch a world unravel. And in that act of witness, we partake in a world remembering itself. With each fallen tree, the tension rises, becoming unbearable. In these moments, the film becomes a form of mourning. It claims our presence, and we know we cannot leave untouched.
Admittedly, the film doesn’t unpack the full weight of the political and economic forces that enable logging in these territories. But it doesn’t need to. Its purpose isn’t to explain everything, but to offer an emotional and ethical intervention. In a world where information overload often numbs us, Fairy Creek reaches out to our feelings, and sows seeds of solidarity.
These glimpses from the film remind us that resistance is not only a political act, but a deeply human one. When movements are too busy mobilizing to archive themselves, films like Fairy Creek fill the gap: preserving memory and shaping possibilities for better futures.
To me, this film is a love letter. To the land and all who came together to protect it. To the quiet but determined hope that a better world is still possible if we collectively work for it. Yes, it’s about saving old-growth trees but it’s also about saving our capacity to care. Even though the battle at Ada’itsx continues, what this film leaves us with is not despair. It is devotion. A call to protect what remains. To mourn what is gone, but at the same time, to embrace our capacity for awe, persistence, and solidarity. Fairy Creek is the type of film that doesn’t offer closure. It asks long-lasting questions. And becomes a lifelong companion.
