Devastation Conservation
The fire passed. The trees did not. What stayed was the soil, the slope, the silence — and the people who decided to plant.
A father and his son plant a young pine on the hillside above Sotalbo, part of the reforestation work supported by the National Geographic Society.
The fire passed through Sotalbo, in the province of Ávila, and left the slopes black. What this short documentary records is what came after.
A village of fewer than three hundred people works alongside a team of National Geographic Explorers to plant the hillside back, season by season, with the species the land had before. The film follows local residents who have lived through more than one fire and who know that the next one is a question of when, not if. They speak about loss without inflating it, about the patience that the work demands, and about why they keep at it. There is no soundtrack swell, no aerial drone shot. The camera waits.
A Buddhist temple under reconstruction on the mountain near Sotalbo. Through its windows, the landscape that the village is putting back together looks at itself.
The pines they replant grow slowly. The oaks slower. Most of the people in the village will not see the forest they are putting back. They are planting it anyway.
