Director’s comment

“In 2018 I started a long-term photo project about the occupation of the Hambach Forest between Cologne and Aachen. It was autumn, the eviction was imminent and I got rather by chance into a world and way of life that increasingly fascinated me. There were people living in tree houses, some of which were built at heights of over 20 meters, in the middle of Germany. To defend a forest of which not much remained after many years of clearing by RWE. A hornbeam-oak-lily of the valley forest, unique in Germany. After the forest had been cleared, the Higher Administrative Court of Münster ruled that it could no longer be cleared. Hambi was saved!

I continued to photograph, got to know the squatters better and gained their trust. In October 2019, another forest in Germany was occupied, the Dannenröder Forst in Hesse. This time a forest was to be cleared for a highway route. And again, dozens of tree houses were built at dizzying heights, in some cases connected with traverses that make it possible to get from one tree house to the next without descending. An assignment for Greenpeace magazine took me there in the summer of 2020 and the idea was born to shoot a documentary this time. I wanted to bring other layers into a narrative: Emotions, music and, yes, action. Shooting a film alone as a photographer has advantages but also many disadvantages. Knowing the power of good images is one side, bringing those images into a gripping dramaturgy is the other. Documentaries and feature films are usually made as a team, and not without reason. The director has an eye on the story, the cameraman on the images, and someone else is responsible for the good sound.

On my own, mistakes can happen quickly. On the other hand, I can achieve a completely different closeness on my own, make myself more invisible and thus also bring a higher authenticity to the story. My approach for the documentary BARRICADE was to get involved in what was happening, not to intervene or direct.

Have I switched from photographer to filmmaker? No, I see myself more as a hybrid. Silk media are tremendously fascinating, yet differently challenging. While photographs work alone or in a series, film is always a complete work that contains many visual and aural layers. The intersection of both is definitely good pictures and an interesting story. We photojournalists have a good basis for taking the leap into the medium of film …”.