SYNOPSIS

There’s a long and storied history of activists blocking logging roads to protect old-growth forests on Vancouver Island. So when a blockade started in recent times at the headwaters of the untouched Fairy Creek valley, I felt compelled to learn who was behind this latest wave of resistance.

I arrived at the Fairy Creek Blockade in the early days, when only a few camps had been established and the energy felt hopeful, even innocent. On my first day, one of the blockaders turned to me and asked, “Do you want to see the Grandfather Tree?” Their sincerity was disarming. Standing at the base of that ancient 1,000-year-old cedar, something stirred in me.

As a filmmaker drawn to the intersection of human culture and the natural world, I felt moved by this renewed story of environmental justice. But what unfolded in front of my camera was far more layered and nuanced. Fairy Creek became an intimate study of activist culture, looking at both the beauty and the faults on the frontlines of resistance.

Our small film crew used a fly-on-the-wall approach to document the blockade as it truly was: gritty, tense, humorous, occasionally euphoric, and often heartbreaking. We lived out of our vehicles for days to weeks, recording around the clock. And when the RCMP blocked off road access, we hiked many kilometres up logging roads and through dense ancient rainforests to reach our participants. The blockade quickly expanded, growing to more than a dozen camps sprawled across the southwest corner of Vancouver island. With no cell service and long stretches of gravel road between each location, it became unfeasible for our crew to continue documenting every unfolding action. We forged friendships with other cinematographers on the ground and leaned into a decentralized filming approach, graciously using footage from a community of media makers to show a more complete story.

Over time, the public perception of Fairy Creek changed – from a movement met with widespread support and optimism, to one entangled in trauma and internal conflict. Several of our subjects abruptly left the blockade. Storylines shifted rapidly. Some participants later asked not to be included in the film. The evolving nature of the blockade mirrored the story itself: uncertain, volatile, and very much alive.

I found myself grappling with questions that had no easy answers: Who gets to take a stand, and at what cost? What does it mean for settler environmentalists to join movements led by Indigenous land defenders – especially when the local Indigenous Nation asked them to leave? Can a movement hold together under the weight of its own internal contradictions? This film is, in part, an attempt to sit with those questions.

While the Fairy Creek blockade involved thousands of people with a wide range of perspectives, this film focuses on a select group whose personal experiences offer a window into the movement. I give thanks to everyone who allowed us to witness their lives during this time. Fairy Creek is not just a chronicle of Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience – it’s an emotional record of a historic moment in time. My hope is that Fairy Creek invites viewers to reflect on their own relationship to land, to activism, and to the messy, necessary work of collective change.

— Jen Muranetz

This film was created on the traditional, unceded and stolen lands of the Nuu-chah-nulth and Coast Salish Peoples, including the Pacheedaht, Ditidaht, lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

We acknowledge Indigenous communities as the original stewards of these territories, having cared for and defended these lands for time immemorial, long before contemporary climate frontlines.