A film by Oliver Ressler
4K video, 35 min., 2025
The planned expansion of Porsche Engineering’s Nardò Technical Centre (NTC) threatens the very survival of the last forest left in the Puglia region of Southern Italy. The Bosco d’Arneo, with centuries-old oaks and a rich ecosystem essential to local biodiversity, is covered by the European Union’s Natura 2000 protection protocol. Yet it is now at risk of being logged to make space for nine new test tracks, a helipad and other infrastructure demanded by Porsche for electric vehicle testing. Dazzled by the prospect of 450 million euros of supposedly incoming investment, the Puglia regional government approved an ecocidal plan to eradicate more than 200 hectares of forest. There was no public consultation whatsoever. The administration also used legislative powers to expropriate the land of 130 people, while notionally requiring the multinational to “compensate” for the loss of the forest by planting new trees in separate plots. Even if those trees were to survive in a water-scarce environment, they could never make up for the richness of an old and diverse ecosystem.
The film focuses on the tireless efforts of the Arneo Forest Custodians (Custodi del Bosco d’Arneo) to defend the Bosco within a territory already at risk of desertification, where millions of olive oil trees have been lost to bacteria, recurrent drought, salty water wells and wildfires. The activists organized an international campaign which included the visit of the environmental German organization Robin Wood, and Istituto Etno with the Indigenous Brazilian leader Maria Agraciada, whose ceremony in support of the land and its defenders appears in the film.
“We are the forest, we need the forest to live”, declares one of the custodians, affirming the inextricable relationship between human and more-than-human life. The film exposes the hypocrisy of an automotive industry that endangers ecosystems of inestimable value on pretexts of technological innovation. It also reflects on broader concerns such as land consumption and climate mitigation at local and global levels. It critiques greenwashing narratives and those institutions that favour the private interests of multinationals over the public interest of their communities.
The protagonists of this struggle are filmed outdoors and in natural settings, shown in a poetic relationship with their beautiful but already drastically devastated environment. They are presented collectively: many voices are raised to defend the commons, retracing a history of struggles from farmers revolting against big feudal landowners to the present-day power of multinationals. Their faces are blurred to prevent repression. The right-wing Italian government of Giorgia Meloni recently passed the so-called Anti-Gandhi-laws, putting activists involved in civil disobedience actions at risk of long prison sentences.
Director and producer: Oliver Ressler
Commissioner: Free Home University (Alessandra Pomarico, Nikolay Oleynikov)
Cinematography: Oliver Ressler
Additional footage: Cosimo Pastore
Editing: Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Oliver Ressler
Colour correction: Rudolf Gottsberger
Sound design: Elliot Perkins
Special thanks to all members of Custodi del Bosco d’Arneo and to Maria Agraciada (Instituto Etno), Indigenous leader of the Tupinambá people, Brazil, whose ceremony in support of the land and its defenders appears in the film.
Additional thanks to Viola Berlanda, Francesco Buonerba, Enzo Debonis, Enar de Dios Rodríguez, Matthew Hyland, Nikolay Oleynikov, Tabea Panizzi, Alessandra Pomarico, Roland Wetzel.
This film was produced in the framework of the solo show Scenes from the Invention of Democracy at Museum Tinguely, Basel, curated by Tabea Panizzi, 2025.
