The ‘Holy Wood Dust’ Director Wants You to Know Your Christmas Tree Is a Living Being With 20 Senses

Director Victor Kossakovsky has developed a reputation for making us reevaluate how we think about human and more-than-human life. His emotional and tender Gunda (2020), about a pig and her piglets, was the first film in his “empathy trilogy.” Last year, his Trillion, a wordless documentary following an artist returning fish scales to the ocean in Norway, was a reference to the estimated number of fish taken from the world’s oceans by humans every year.

At the Venice Film Festival, Kossakovsky will world premiere, in a Venice Open – Out of Competition slot on Sept. 6, his new film, Holy Wood Dust, a cinematic invitation into the life and world of trees in collaboration with Italian botanist and author Stefano Mancuso – and an invitation to change our perspective.

“While art may be powerless to halt the conflicts unfolding around us and cannot stop the bullets of today, I believe that telling stories rooted in empathy can plant the seeds for a more peaceful future,” the Russian-born Kossakovsky says in a director’s statement on the Venice website.

“What happens to a stump the second after a tree is cut down? What does that tree think and feel at that very moment?” a synopsis for the film asks. “Holy Wood Dust is an invitation to radically reimagine the plant kingdom from a new, groundbreaking perspective.”

Holy Wood Dust comes from production companies Be Water Film, Solaria Film, RAI Cinema, Oceanika, Allegra Films and Doppelplusultra Filmproduktion. Be Water Film is handling Italian distribution, with RAI Cinema handling sales.

Director Kossakovsky co-wrote the film with Mancuso. Gianmarco Donaggio is the cinematographer, with editing handled by Ainara Vera.

Ahead of the film’s world premiere at Venice, THR talked to Kossakovsky about the inspiration for Holy Wood Dust, a scene that will remind cinema buffs of a Federico Fellini classic, and why he isn’t done with his “empathy” films.

Why did you want to make a film about trees?

When I was a kid, I walked with my mom, and I took one leaf from a bush, and my mom said: “Why did you do that?” And I said, “Oh, it’s beautiful.” And she said, “If we take out one of your hairs, do you feel pain?” So I said, “Yes, of course.” My mother said: “The bush feels the same. It feels pain. So don’t do that any longer.” This has stayed with me all my life.

Once I lived in Berlin, there was a brilliant autumn, and I picked up a dead leaf that had fallen off a tree. I broke it in front of a microscope, and I saw something unbelievable. You know what happens to us if you cut your finger? Blood is trying to heal and close the [wound], right? And that made me wonder: What if I looked through a microscope when they cut a tree? What would I see? Of course, it’s complicated, and you cannot bring a microscope to the forest. So, making a film [about this] was a challenge.

But we finally made it, and it really looks like War and Peace. You can see that this tree is totally confused [when things shown in the film happen to the region it stands in]. The tree has lived for 100 years, so what suddenly happened? I remember I was filming and shaking because it’s obvious that something bad happened to the tree, something horrible. It’s confused, suffering, trying to heal and trying to fight.

How did you end up collaborating on Holy Wood Dust with Stefano Mancuso?

My assistant was reading something from him during another project when we were on a boat in a storm. She told me, “You have to read this!” So, I started to read it and then had to buy more of his books, and then I wrote him. And a miracle happened. He wrote back to me in one minute: “I saw a few of your films, so I want to see you as well.” So, it happened by coincidence that we both needed each other. He is a visionary man. And 15 years ago, I started thinking about this film.

Did you always know it would be a film about fir trees?

I had a few different ideas, a few different characters. At first, it was supposed to be a film about linden trees [or basswood trees, as they are known in the U.S.]. They are very cinematic. They are like this. (He stretches his arms to the sides.)

With a Christmas tree, it’s just a vertical triangle, which is not cinematic, especially in the film format I like. I like the 2:1 aspect ratio, which makes things very difficult for a Christmas tree. But I said no, I need to find something to challenge myself with a tree, which doesn’t look good in this aspect ratio, and it needed to be something universal. And Christmas is, of course, something everyone is attached to emotionally. We kind of all connect to the idea of Christmas, and so I decided to make a film for kids and for families.

There is an iconic-feeling scene in Holy Wood Dust of a helicopter flying a Christmas tree towards the Vatican. Am I right to see that as a conscious reference to Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, which has that famous scene of a helicopter above Rome transporting a statue of Jesus Christ to the Vatican?

I really wanted to say my thanks to Fellini because I remember the moment when I first saw one of his films. I was a teenager, and I saw 8½ in a very good cinema in Saint Petersburg. I remember when the film finished, people left, and I was alone, crying, and I wouldn’t stop. I was just crying, crying, and cleaning ladies came in and started to brush, and they looked at me and said, “Okay, cry, my friend, cry.” It was a full cinema, but I knew the film was for me. It felt like the screen was just for me, and the film stayed with me all my life.

There is also a powerful scene in the film where Stefano Mancuso and a group of kids discuss the importance and value of trees, which has surprising and impactful information.

Yes, [that was] important [because] we consider trees like decoration, right? I took [some experiences] with trees as a sign to do this film. It was like a tree was crying, asking me: “Victor, see it. Do it because no one understands. Everyone considers us as decoration. We are not. We are living beings.”

I find the title intriguing. Was Holy Wood Dust always the title for this film?

It is great, but I’m never happy with the working title. The working title was Tears for Fears.

Gunda and Trillion, both executive-produced by Joaquin Phoenix, were the first two films in what you have described as a trilogy on empathy. This film is different, as it isn’t wordless and black-and-white, but it still covers empathy. What’s your plan for the trilogy at this point?

There are going to be more, at least two more. But I can’t say more at this point.

What’s your hope for Holy Wood Dust once audiences see it?

I’m not saying, Don’t celebrate Christmas, don’t have a Christmas tree! I’m saying you can do whatever you want to do, but be aware that this is not decoration. The Christmas tree is a living being. It’s a live organism, which has 20 senses, and which can live, if you don’t cut it, for 500 years.

We have five senses. Plants have 20 senses, at least 20. Imagine that, and then you can do whatever you want. You can cut a tree, put it in your corner, and then you can throw it away. Just be aware that if you don’t cut it, it can live for 500 years.

But this film, I believe, kids will love, and families will love because, in a way, it’s a Christmas carol.