Life and Death of a Christmas Tree

It doesn’t matter. If you fall from a tree – you will die anyway.

Jingle bells everywhere. Christmas is coming soon. Christmas trees are an inevitable adornment in every city and almost every household. We can hardly imagine Christmas without a Christmas tree. Lithuanian documentalist goes behind the scenes of the never-seen magic of Christmas to show how Christmas trees reach your home.

Mellow Georgians in the Racha region pick cones on 40-metre-tall treetops and risk their lives on every branch. Fir seeds from the Caucasus Mountains are transported to idyllic Denmark. Rich farmers like gourmand Marianne and “Jackie Brown” aficionado Lars calmly grow and distribute Christmas trees between fine dining. They mostly worry about protecting the trees from deer in the wintertime.

This film was tragically cursed and had to adapt to painful losses. One morning before a huge snowfall 15-year-old Mate found his father’s gun on the table and shot his best friend 13-year-old Luka for reasons unknown. The boys from Tlughi village were to be the protagonists and the director decided against replacing them. In August 2023, the Racha region suffered a deadly landslide and several people you see in the film are missing and one musician was confirmed dead among 11 casualties.

Edvinas Pukšta

源自：https://poff.ee/en/film/life-and-death-of-a-christmas-tree/