Invoking the protest strategy of the same name - ‘an action that aims to achieve its goal immediately and in the most effective way’ - Direct Action is a contemporary portrait of an energising, militant-activist community in France: a rural collective of 150 people that survived several violent eviction attempts by the French state, successfully blocked an international airport expansion project in Brittany, established an autonomous zone from 2012 to 2018, and three years later evolved into a formidable environmental movement. Through a collaborative and uniquely immersive observational approach, Direct Action documents the everyday lives of a diverse ecosystem of activists, squatters, anarchists, farmers and those labelled ‘eco-terrorists’ by the government to better understand how the success of radical protest movements can pave a way through - perhaps even out of - the climate crisis.

The film will be preceded by a panel discussion with guest Jutta Matysek ( Save the Lobau - Nature instead of Concrete ).