THE GIANTS
The epic fight to save ancient forests.
Country of Origin: Australia
CHARLES CONNELL, Director
Country of Origin: Australia
CHARLES CONNELL, Director
Female creative duo Laurence Billiet and Rachael Antony are the co-writer/producer/directors of The Giants. The film was a great indie success upon its theatrical release in Australia and made it into the Top 5 Australian films of the year at the box office. It won many awards including the Best Cinematography at the AACTA 2024 (the Australian Oscars).
Their previous film FREEMAN (ABC TV), in collaboration with Stephen Page at Bangarra Dance Theatre, was the most watched documentary of 2020 on Australian television. It was awarded the 2021 Australian Directors Guild award for Best Direction in a Documentary & the prestigious 2021 Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting.
Director Statement
"Inspiring. Joyful. Beautiful"
— Academy Award Winning Director Jane Campion on 'The Giants'
In January 2020 the world looked on in horror as Australia was engulfed in catastrophic bushfires. It was a harbinger of times to come – last summer unprecedented wildfires destroyed massive swathes of precious forests and woodlands across Europe and North America.
The Giants is an attempt to create something beautiful out of the ashes of the megafires. It’s a call to action for the world’s forests that celebrates the right to protest, the achievements of people power and showcases the diversity of the environmental movement — women, LGBT activists and First Nations.
Australia, like North America, is one of the few places in the world which has Gondwana-era forest and is home to some of the oldest and tallest trees in the world. These precious ancient forests are still being logged for wood pulp and turned into toilet paper, despite being habitat for countless unique endangered animals, from koalas to the swift parrot.
In making The Giants we wanted to speak for the trees. The film invites the audience to enter a poetic and creative ‘tree world’ and see trees as active, living beings, and show some of the invisible processes that take place in forest communities. We rigged cameras 80m high up in the canopy for a unique bird’s eye view of the forest and 3D scanned giant trees from root to crown. French artist Alex Le Guillou transformed this data into breathtaking point-cloud animation.
Conservationist and LGBT activist, Bob Brown is a giant of the environmental movement who has relentlessly worked to protect our ancient forests. The film tells not just the history of one person but of an entire ecosystem. It’s a story of natural beauty and wonder, of caring and defiance and of optimism in the face of adversity. We hope it inspires the audience to write the next chapter.
In the course of making this film we fell in love with these extraordinary trees – we hope you do too.