Metsä jossa elät / The forest you live in
(2025, Wildhog Productions)

black & white drama, 12min.
language: finnish (subtitled: english)

Starring:
Sherwan Haji, Laura Birn, Tapio Liinoja, Tatu Mönttinen,

Crew:
Written and directed by: Topi Raulo
Cinematography: Nestori Majoinen
Costume design: Riina Leea Nieminen
Production design: Sara Pettersson
Make-up design: Heidi Huovinen
Editing: Lyydia Mäkipää
Sound Design: Saku Klemetti
Music: Emil Sana

Contact: Wildhog Productions Oy, wildhog.fi

Synopsis:
When an immigrant taxi driver finds the ashes of a deceased stranger in his backseat, his night shift turns into a search for a final resting place that transcends cultures. Can the literal ground be our common ground?

Director Statement

We have cut down so many trees that we have blinded ourselves to the fact that we live in a forest. It is a vast, global forest in which we have built houses, caves made of sticks and stones. We get everything from the forest, and when we die, we give everything back.

Nature gave us humans the miraculous ability to tell stories; to share goals, beliefs, and abstract concepts. But today, we’ve poisoned our collective well with narratives about the individual, about eternal life, and about death as a dark taboo. We talk about Nature as a service, even while we know that this “service” will soon end if we don’t change our material-thirsty rituals.

Today there’s fundamental flaws in our stories. Nature isn’t something separate from us; it is us. And death isn’t just part of life; it is life, the transformation of a corpse into another organism’s living force. I believe we all feel this truth in the deepest corners of our hearts. Some of us avoid it, some of us confront it, but we are all equally powerless in face of it. Our ecosystem gives us everything, and when it’s time, it takes everything away, like a true manifestation of divinity.

With science, we have gained understanding of the complexities of ecosystems. But with all this scientific knowledge, could our ecosystem still be considered sacred?

The Forest You Live In is a meditation on our relationship with nature, tought from the perspective of a dead person. It’s a reminder that as we look at the cycle of life, the cycle of life is looking straight back at us. We are it, after all.

Maybe an outsider, a refugee who has lost everything, can approach this truth unclouded by cultural narratives, separate from nationality, religion, and social schemes. When those are not present, what remains are the most obvious yet important intuitions. The outsider and the urn of ashes have a lot in common; they are both separated from the roots of their trees. Maybe they can help each other out?

My mission is to build bridges between different cultures, through fostering a richer relationship between us and our ecological environment. A new relationship that exists beyond the realms of science and politics.

In the forest we all live in, could the literal ground be our common ground?