Holy Wood Dust: Seeing Trees as Living Beings with 20 Senses

When Victor Kossakovsky steps onto the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival, he’s not just presenting another nature documentary. He’s holding up a mirror to a world we usually glide past—trees, those silent giants that line our streets, our parks, even our Christmas decorations.

His latest film, Holy Wood Dust, isn’t a slick travelogue about forests. It’s a tender, sometimes unsettling invitation to imagine that a tree, cut down in a split second, experiences a cascade of sensations—pain, confusion, a desperate attempt to heal. As the festival program describes, the film asks: “What happens to a stump the instant a tree is felled? What does that tree think and feel at that very moment?”

The idea sprouted from a childhood memory. Kossakovsky recalls, “I once plucked a leaf and my mother asked if I’d feel pain if a hair were pulled out of me. She said the bush feels the same. That stuck with me.” Decades later, a dead leaf under a microscope revealed the same kind of frantic, blood‑like response we see in our own wounds, prompting him to wonder what a tree’s microscopic wounds might look like.

Turning that curiosity into a film was no easy feat. “You can’t lug a microscope into a forest,” he laughed, acknowledging the absurdity. Still, with the help of Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso—who co‑wrote the script—and a team that includes cinematographer Gianmarco Donaggio and editor Ainara Vera, Kossakovsky managed to capture something that feels part science, part poetry.

The visual style, he admits, is “like War and Peace meets a Christmas carol.” One lingering scene shows a centuries‑old oak, its bark scarred by a recent logging, trembling as if in shock. The camera lingers on sap oozing like blood, while a muted choir of forest sounds swells. It’s a moment that feels both epic and intimate, a nod to Fellini’s surreal sensibility that Kossakovsky reverently cites.

Beyond aesthetics, the director hopes the film plants a seed—literally and metaphorically. In his statement on the Venice website, the Russian‑born filmmaker says, “Art may not stop bullets, but stories rooted in empathy can sow the beginnings of a more peaceful future.” The documentary is a call to extend the empathy we reserve for humans to the plant kingdom, to recognize that a Christmas tree isn’t just a decoration but a living being with twenty senses.

Produced by Be Water Film, Solaria Film, RAI Cinema, Oceanika, Allegra Films and Doppelplusultra Filmproduktion, Holy Wood Dust will open the Venice Open – Out of Competition slate on September 6. While Be Water Film handles Italian distribution and RAI Cinema oversees sales, the real distribution the director hopes for is in our minds, prompting us to think twice before snapping that perfect holiday photo.

When asked if this is the last of his “empathy” trilogy, Kossakovsky smiles, “No. There’s still so much life that we ignore.” He hints at future projects that may turn the camera toward insects, fungi, maybe even the microscopic worlds that dwell on a single leaf. For now, though, his focus is on the trees that have watched us grow, and the quiet, profound conversation they seem ready to have—if only we learn to listen.