Synopsis
The Woodland Threshold takes us on an introspective journey into the heart of the Laotian forest. The film follows Dao’s journey, letting her thoughts wander to the rhythm of her footsteps, venturing into the depths of her memory. Between the parks of Rennes, where she lives, and the jungles of northern Laos, we wander with her on an inner journey, where the boundary between past and present becomes porous.
A word from Tënk
Here, the forest is no mere backdrop, but a living, breathing matter — porous, trembling with memory. With each step, the protagonist rekindles buried lineages, summons ancestral voices, and awakens the echoes of an elsewhere that the present has never fully silenced.
Giulia Grossmann films this space as a threshold — the meeting of two lands, two times, two identities. Walking becomes a ritual of return, a way to weave oneself back into the thread of origins through the vibration of the senses.
Between the bare trees of France and the luxuriant forests of Laos, the film unfolds the intimate tension of exile — that tender fracture where the longing for belonging takes root. In the shimmering grain of the image and the deep resonance of sound, the forest reveals itself as an inner territory, a passage between loss and endurance. A liminal place where the visible and invisible intertwine, and where every breath seems to summon the world back into being.
Pascale Ferland
Filmmaker, teacher and programmer
