Once Upon a Forest

Here’s a doc for nature lovers and tree huggers, narrated by France’s answer to David Attenborough, the botanist Francis Hallé. At the grand old age of 75 there he is, standing 230 feet above the forest floor (no rope!) in the Amazon. Welcome to the jungle. Hallé is here to tell us about the secret life of trees. And what a story. There’s the strangler fig; its seeds, carried by animal poo, drop on to host trees and take hold, growing their roots downwards. Hallé shows how trees, under attack from predators, communicate by sending alarm signals to each other. It’s beautiful and amazing. But being French, Hallé likes a poetical turn of phrase. And, jumping from idea to idea, he rambles a bit (you don’t get that with Atters). Still, every single one of this doc’s 78 minutes is packed with incredible footage, directed by Luc Jacquet (the man behind ‘March of the Penguins’). Underneath it all is a message about the plight of the vanishing rainforests, as trees that take 700 years to grow are being razed to the ground in minutes.