Laurent Charbonnier’s film, “Le Chêne”, is a true celebration of nature. This feature film tells the story of a 210-year-old tree and all its inhabitants. A pillar in his kingdom in Tour-en-Sologne.
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Neither quite a documentary, nor really a fiction: this is what film producer Michel Seydoux, who financed this adventure, wanted for the film The Oak, an 80-minute feature film without any commentary. In this ode to nature, a 210-year-old tree plays the main role. At his side, the actors are squirrels and the extras balanins, hawks and jays, under the camera of Laurent Charbonnier.
We could have had a much larger cast, but we only focused on a few species.
Laurent CharbonnierDirector
For his first film, Laurent Charbonnier will have crisscrossed France for months scouting, to find this Solognot tree that he has succeeded in magnifying. The filmmaker imagined the oak tree as a building with its apartments and its tenants. This former technician who worked on Microcosmos, the film dedicated to insects, features animals and plants in a ballet punctuated by the seasons. He patiently films the life, loves and intrigues of an entire ecosystem for a year. “In this lookout, I must have spent hours and hours, days, weeks and months, because the film was shot over a little over 18 months”says the director.
With no less than 350 hours of rushes and more than nine months of editing, the making of this film represented real painstaking work. The original soundtrack also required several weeks of sound effects.
There was a tremendous amount of work between the musicians, the sound engineers and the sound editors to make this absolutely wonderful soundtrack;
Laurent Charbonnierdirector
Yes The Oak is of incredible aesthetics and magnificent poetry, its main purpose is to raise awareness about the importance of trees for the environment. An instructive and educational film to discover as a family from February 23.