Montreal. May 19, 2025. Understory Films & Cinema Politica are pleased to announce that award-winning documentary feature FAIRY CREEK will screen for audiences in theatres across Canada starting June 6, 2025. Directed by Jen Muranetz, the film had its world premiere at the Planet in Focus Film Festival, where it won the Best Canadian Feature Award, and its US premiere at the prestigious Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana, with subsequent sold-out screenings at the Whistler Film Festival and the Victoria Film Festival. The film will screen in Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Sudbury, Lasqueti Island, with more cities to be added.
Vancouver, BC
Rio Theatre
opens June 7
VIFF Centre
opens June 6
Victoria, BC
Cinecenta
opens June 6
Sudbury, ON
Sudbury Indie Cinema
opens June 6
Lasqueti Island, BC
Lasqueti Community Hall
opens June 6
Nanaimo, BC
Landmark Cinemas
opens June 6
FAIRY CREEK is a gripping immersion into the frontlines of the Fairy Creek blockade protest, Canada’s largest demonstration of civil disobedience, where thousands of activists participate in a last-ditch attempt to halt old growth logging in the pristine Ada’itsx (Fairy Creek) valley. When forestry workers retaliate, and police arrests begin, tensions rise on this historic climate frontline.
With unique insider access and use of in-the-trenches cinema vérité, FAIRY CREEK offers an intimate, fly-on-the-wall view of collective resistance. Viewers are brought into the throes of this complex standoff, where blockaders form barriers with their bodies and tree-sitters’ forest canopies are assailed by police officers deployed from helicopters. Beyond the frontline footage, an ensemble cast of activists, land defenders and loggers makes up an array of perspectives, adding nuance to the personal sacrifices and moral dilemmas within protest culture. More than just a snapshot in time, director Jen Muranetz creates a searing portrait of contemporary environmental activism, bearing witness to the lengths activists are willing to go to protect some of Canada’s last old growth forests.
“At its core, FAIRY CREEK is a study of activist culture, diving into the intricacies and tensions that arise in the high-stakes environment of a frontline protest. My hope is that audiences leave the film reflecting on their own positionality, beliefs, and relationship to activism and land defense,”
— Jen Muranetz.
Filmed in Port Renfrew, Victoria and Southern Vancouver Island, Port Renfrew and Vancouver, BC and in Montreal, QC, FAIRY CREEK is directed and produced by Jen Muranetz (What About Our Future?) and produced by Sepehr Samimi (Light Through The Blindfold) who is also the director of photography. Executive producers are Mark Achbar (The Corporation, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media), Neal Livingston and Mitchell Steinke. The film was edited by Rafi Spivak (Raised to be Heroes, Kingsway) and Liam Sherriff (Physician, Heal Thyself) with a magnetic score from Amine Bouzaher. Nettie Wild (KONELINE: Our Land Beautiful, FIX: The Story of an Addicted City) was the film’s story advisor.
FAIRY CREEK is distributed by Cinema Politica and the film was made possible with the support of Telefilm Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, BC Art Council, the National Film Board of Canada’s Filmmaker Assistance Program, and Small Change Fund.
Read the full press release here.
