Co-directed by Rémi Rappe and Santiago Serrano, this documentary has the distinction of being narrated by a tree (in French, anyway). Somewhat falling between the limbs of climate-change eco-essay and ethnology of a South American tribe in Chile, it uses as a point-of-departure the Araucaria Araucana, an ancient arboreal species (AKA "millennium tree," Chilean pine, or monkey-puzzle tree) often found growing on Andes mountainsides.
The adult plant has a distinctive, almost Seussian mushroom shape, scale-like bark thick enough to resist lava flows, and clever biological defenses against parasites. Even so, deforestation and global warming have put the Araucaria Araucana in grave danger, and while supposedly protected by law, the tree is still at man's mercy.
The Pehuenches, a local Indian tribe, hold the tree sacred (similar to the relations North America's First Nations had with the buffalo, though no direct comparison is made). Its edible nuts (rather confusingly translated as "pigeons") provide their sustenance, even their coffee. But western/Spanish imperialism and creeping modernism have badly eroded the culture of the Pehuenches, and community/tribal leaders here worry about the next generation remaining to speak the language or maintain their harmony with nature.
It is more an impressionistic and Rosseau-ish romanticized portrayal (as the tree poetically ruminates, one cannot help be reminded that March of the Penguins wasn't a hit until distributors rewrote the original French narration and recorded it with Morgan Freeman) than what one might see in an off-the-rack PBS special, but considering how few ethnobotany titles are extant, this one deserves attention for Sympatico shelves. Aud: H, C, P.