Crime Scene Rainforest

WDR / ARTE / FFF, 2011, 45 und 52 minutes

Four fifths of the Earth’s last primary rainforests have already been destroyed by fire-clearing and illegal clear-felling. The feeble remainder now also faces the same, terrible fate. The reason for this is that the illegal timber trade is the second largest source of income for the globally operating Mafia – superseded only by their earnings generated by dealing in drugs and weapons. But the undercover investigators of the environment protection group EIA are on the trail of the illegal timber-traders: Environmental spy Alexander von Bismarck has declared war on the timber smugglers.

With his hidden camera and a false identity, the great-great-nephew of the ‘Iron Chancellor’ fights against the ruthless plundering of the rainforests. His goal is a total ban on the trading, processing and sale of illegal timber. The legal situation is convoluted and the international demand for increasingly cheaper timber is insatiable. Nobody wants to know where the cheap wood actually comes from and where it ultimately ends up - as toilet seats, garden chairs and guitars and even tooth-picks.

"Crime Scene Rainforest", directed by Michaela Kirst, wins the prize of NaturVision-Filmfestival Ludwigsburg in July 2012.