Wood

Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan, Michaela Kirst, Ebba Sinzinger

Environmental docu-thriller going undercover in the illegal wood business. Alexander von Bismarck hunts down the logging mafia from Siberia to China and from Romania to Peru. Eye-opening wake-up call about a hidden worldwide scandal.

All over the world, billions of dollars are made from illegal wood logging. Alexander von Bismarck, director of the American NGO Environmental Investigation Agency, spent many years exposing this crime. He goes undercover with a concealed camera, dyed hair and fake business cards to pretend to do business with the timber mafia. Through their detective work, Von Bismarck and his team amass heaps of evidence of the illegal destruction of the world’s forests.

Von Bismarck wades into the taiga’s of Eastern Russia, to find illegal logging operations in the last habitat of the endangered Siberian tiger. He visits the Peruvian rainforest, where NGO’s raise awareness among native communities to make the wood chain more fair and sustainable. In Romania, where Europe’s last remaining virgin forest is plundered and the wood sold to a big Austrian company, the consequences reach high up the country’s power chain. Where investigative journalism becomes a full-blown thriller. 

Credits

Director
Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan, Michaela Kirst, Ebba Sinzinger
Year
2020
Country of production
Austria, Romania, Germany
Type
Documentary
Duration
98 minutes
Spoken language
Chinese (Mandarin), English, Romanian, Russian
Subtitles
EN
Production company
Wildart Film
World Sales
Magnetfilm