It's always great when you get to ask filmmakers about the choices they made that stayed with you from their film.
In my review of A City in the Forest, I highlighted two choices in particular that made the film feel special: the inclusion of footage of protesters seemingly asking the filmmakers for help while being arrested, and some remarkable shifts into and out of monochrome negative.
So two of my first questions in my conversation with directors Lev Omelchenko and Nolan Huber at the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival were about those decisions. But in our almost 40-minute conversation, we touched on nearly every aspect of the film and the movement to stop cop city that it depicts.
You can read that conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, below.
ScreenAnarchy: I open my review by saying I was really struck by the moments y'all included of protesters being arrested violently asking for help. I wasn't struck by the choice to not engage, that makes sense to me as documentarians, but the choice to include that in the film. Can you tell me about that choice?
Nolan Huber: I think one of the things that we wanted to do the entire time was be as honest about what happened as possible. And our editor, Emily Yue, was really who pushed the hardest for those decisions because it immerses you in the scene. And sometimes you can forget that we're there, but I think it is important to understand that we're also having to make real time decisions about our positionality as things are unfolding.
Lev Omelchenko: I would also say that in my experience with the movement, I never felt like people saw me, when I'm filming, as someone that should put down the camera. I think people understood that these people are here with cameras, this is their role. So even when that person's on the ground being like "help" -- I wasn't there, Nolan was there -- but I read it as they're shouting to the other people that are out there, not to the filmmakers. I mean, what are we really gonna do in this situation?
There are also moments in the film when people yell out "I would like to be filmed," because that is me getting coverage of the abuse that they're receiving, as well as getting their name. So there were moments where people actively wanted to be filmed. So I would say for the most part, I never felt like people were like, 'what are you doing filming and not helping out?' It usually was 'okay, your role here is to film,' and I think people generally recognize that for us to have a level of safety as press also means having a certain level of distance within the moment so that we are able to continue what we're doing and not be arrested along with everybody else.
Right, this goes into my next question because y'all do include some of those moments in meetings of people disagreeing about strategy and things like that. And I think including those moments also just speaks to, as Lev you were just talking about, the different roles people can have, the different forms of combating state violence.
And there was another moment that I think is a 2 second shot of a printed sign that says something along the lines of "They shot him 57 times" and then in Sharpie, "him" is crossed out and "them" is handwritten. To me, that kind of speaks to both the disconnect and the coalition building between - I'm gonna paint with a broad brush - older liberals and younger queer people. Can y'all speak to the inclusion of that in the film?
Lev Omelchenko: Yeah, first of all, it's just good to remind people that Tort [Tortuguita, a forest defender activist featured in the film who was killed by Atlanta police] was a person who used "they" and "it" as pronouns, if it's at any point confusing. Because one of the times that it's most made overt is Tucker Carlson and I don't want that to be the main way that you get that information.
Nolan Huber: Tucker Carlson is like one of the only people who really gets Tort's pronouns right.
[laughter]
Lev Omelchenko: Yeah. But I will say the coalition building was one of the most beautiful things about the movement. And it did really bring people into relationships with people maybe they don't normally spend time with for various reasons. Maybe race or gender or queerness or whatever other marker or division that is somewhat artificial in our society, it really did help melt those differences away.
I will also say, we also had elders who were queer, like Lorraine, who gets arrested, she's been a lesbian and queer organizer since her 20s in Atlanta, so since the 60s. So we did have a lot of elders who have been on the level for a very long time. It wasn't just the young kids educating the old folks. It was giving the older folks who have been doing this for a long time their place in the movement as well.
Was it her who was holding the "Dykes against cop city" sign?
Lev Omelchenko: Exactly.
Nolan Huber: Yeah.
I love that and the "Clergy against cop city" sign.
Lev Omelchenko: It was important for us to show that there's different types of people showing up to this movement from different backgrounds making it clear that 'this is the community I'm coming from. Don't try to say that the only people that oppose this are the out-of-town white kids. I'm a part of this community as an elder, as a queer person, as a clergy member, whatever, and I oppose this thing. So don't try to erase me from this movement because I don't fit into the box of who you think this movement is.'
Right.
I really love the inversion to the monochrome negative and what I called "a formal gut punch" when the final version of that switches from color positive to that monochrome negative and doesn't return to color positive. So I'm curious what brought you all to that imagery and if there's any thematic resonances that y'all were trying to evoke with that.
Nolan Huber: We always wanted to find a way to bring these communiques -- all of those writings came from the Scenes from the Atlanta Forest NoBlogs site where people could anonymously publish, it was really like poetry after acts of sabotage. And we compiled different [entries] to create each [communique sequence in the film] in some way. We really wanted to find an aesthetic that brought the vibe of that. That site was just a black screen with that green text so we used that font, those colors, etc. And Lev was just playing around with different aesthetic choices and, of course, there's an infrared shot that the police have from one of the police helicopters. And we always found that imagery to be interesting so - Lev, you can talk about actually finding the inversion.
Lev Omelchenko: Yeah, to that point -- things that maybe are not as overt -- for us the forest always had this sense of being like the zone from Stalker, the Tarkovsky film; actually one of the zines had talked about Stalker. The zone in that movie is this place where the rules of engagement are shifting and are unclear and are mazelike. So there's something about how the laws of reality are just not what they are in everyday life outside of the zone.
And we felt the entire forest really had that energy to it. Once you enter the forest, you're now navigating this land and relationships very differently. There was a sign that said, "You're now leaving the USA" that's in the film on 16mm. It really had this quality to it. And especially when people are then willing to engage in acts of sabotage and property destruction, I feel like that was even more heightened. So I wanted it to feel like you're being brought into a different way of seeing what is possible. Cutting through things to the core of them, like x-ray or infrared.
And visually by getting rid of the color, it has that black and white quality that the blogs have. So it created a good backdrop for this green glowing text that Nolan and I spent a lot of time working on with help from Grand Army, who are the people that we brought on to help us with the graphics, to get it just quite right, that was very important. And like you said, at the very end, we don't fade back and we were deciding whether or not to put any words there. And there was a version of the film where we had experimented with that [having words over the final negative shot], but it felt more powerful to leave it. Like, 'you know what happens when you see this, and you can understand what could be said, but we don't have to say those things. We can just show them.'
Nolan Huber: One of the things that I think is really apparent about the communiques and the digital negative is that, at least to me, they progressively get more angry. And I think that the final shot, when it is in that digital negative, and you're actually not hearing anything, is by far the angriest. And there's something to be said about the ways that just an image can translate collective anger in such a powerful way. And I think that's why we landed there. Sometimes, for certain emotions, there are not words that can get you there. So that's really what went into that choice at the end.
A lot of the footage from the protest directly after the killing of Rayshard Brooks has the same crisp digital look as much of the film that I know y'all shot. Is that footage that y'all shot? Were y'all in those protests? Or is that footage that y'all gathered later? And then when did you decide to make a movie? And were those the same moment or not?
Lev Omelchenko: So, Rayshard was murdered in my neighborhood and my friends were there when it happened, and they were the ones that were posting on Instagram what was happening. So a lot of people I knew were there. But I wasn't at the time. For whatever reason, I didn't want to film what was happening [in the immediate aftermath], I wasn't making a movie about it. But we had friends that were. So we were able to work with them to get footage that they had shot, and to integrate it into this film. We had a lot of support from the Atlanta film community both in terms of bringing them on to help us shoot the things we needed to film, and like 'oh, someone that we know must have been filming that night,' and one of our friends was, and we were able to work with them to get that footage.
We didn't actually start making the film until they announced cop city because that's when it was like, 'okay, there's something happening here.' Even as we were gathering footage -- honestly, my first day of filming, when they voted cop city through in September of 2021, I was arrested that day. I have my arrest on camera, it didn't make it into the final cut, but that was how it started. And then over the next year, we were filming in the forest, etc. But the idea of what the film would be was still coalescing because the movement and its identity was still growing and expanding and emerging for us to be able to understand what it was we were actually trying to communicate about it.
So, off you saying your first day of filming was also a day you got arrested, I feel like this is maybe a bit of a silly question, but how did y'all connect with the forest defenders? It sounds like this wasn't 'documentarians gaining the trust of people,' but like these are people you're already in community with and then you started making a film.
Nolan Huber: Yeah, exactly. I remember somebody asking before the city council vote, "Would you live in the woods?" People in our community were already talking about what it would look like to occupy and things like that. I think that's one of the things that makes this film really special and a bit like lightning in a bottle. Where you may never know somebody's name, but you can feel their humanity, you can feel the intimacy with them.
You feel like you know them because the people behind the cameras did know them. And that, I think, makes a world of difference. When you are a filmmaker who has the blessing of your community to play this role in this way. It really is such a privilege to be able to step in in that way and say, 'Hey, these are the skills that we can offer.' That really nobody else has both this particular skill set and these particular relationships. What a gift to get to make a film with that much overlap. And at that point, it's kind of like, 'Well, we have to do this.'
Lev Omelchenko: I'll add that this was right after 2020, after COVID. So I would tell people, 'The forest is the best venue in town. It's got the best parties, it's got the best shows, the best vibes, and it's got the best film screenings.' It was a place of culture where people are like, 'Hey, this is our public land and we can use it for the people.' I think that's why it was very important for us to start the film with that because a lot of people came into the movement, into the struggle, because they came to a party. They came to something that wasn't on its face, 'oh, I'm going to live in the forest.' It was, 'Yo, this great DJ in town is playing in the woods, that sounds sick.' And then you have to cross the creek to get there, and then you're like, 'whoa, what is this place?'
And people fall in love with the land, and the possibility of having this sort of freedom that land provides. I think that was the case for us, 'hey, I wanna have a good time, and I wanna spend it with people who are --' there's just something interesting that happens when people are able to engage in culture while also knowing that doing so is also an overtly political act. Like 'yes, I'm dancing, but I am also dancing because me being here physically is contributing to the protection of the space.' It's liberating. It makes you feel like, 'Finally, I can do something in a small way that actually feels full of life, rather than just alienated entertainment.'
That's beautiful, and I think very true.
You said y'all had friends making films and you were able to gather that footage and include it in this. Did any of those other films become individual projects or did they all funnel into A CITY IN THE FOREST and contribute to this as the definitive film that you all were gonna make as a community?
Nolan Huber: So the 2020 footage at the Wendy's, a lot of that was filmed by a filmmaker named Brandon Mishawn. Early on in the struggle, before Lev and I were even making a film, Brandon had put together a 20 chapter anthology of the 2020 uprisings. And I had programmed that at an event -- it was actually the night we met in person, at that event at the Argosy in East Atlanta Village -- and one of the chapters of that 20 chapter anthology was that night at the Wendy's. So it was already part of Brandon's project and then when we were editing, we reached out to Brandon to see 'hey, can we see what you have from that night?'
So Brandon Mishawn. And then Walter Zarnowitz, another young filmmaker, actually from California, was out in the forest for a bit and made a short that was overlaying interviews with forest defenders walking through the woods. And we really loved the style, we loved some of the footage that Walter had, so we reached out to Walter. And Walter was just thrilled that we had even seen it, and was excited to contribute to the film. And luckily later on in the process, when we were able to get some funding, we made sure that all the people who had contributed were compensated. And that was really nice, being able to be like, 'Hey, we got some money, here you go. Thank you so much.' And that's part of the trust-based process, making sure you follow through on all these commitments that you have to other artists, the people in the film, etc.
So, you just said that y'all met in 2021? Did you meet and then immediately start working together?
Lev Omelchenko: I wouldn't say immediately. It took some time because you could tell 'oh, there's a story here.' But it took a while to actually figure out what was happening. I think really when it was clear that we were gonna work together was around the winter of 2022 when things really started to escalate with the state repression. So before Tort's assassination, but leading up to it. And when it really started to feel like, 'okay, either we're full in or we're not.' And I think that was the moment where we both had to make the decision 'okay, this is gonna be our life for an undetermined amount of time because this utopian space is now very directly under attack.' So I would say within the runtime of the film, we were working together for most of that runtime. But we were both kind of coming towards that moment [of deciding to make a film] over the course of that first act.
Nolan Huber: And we had both seen each other's work. I was doing a lot of journalism around cop city at the time. And Lev was one of my favorite Atlanta filmmakers at the time so it was really cool that it made sense for us to collaborate on this together.
It's surprising to hear that the decision to collaborate on making a film didn't happen until 2022, because it feels, for lack of a better term, like y'all are in the shit from 2020 forward. So it's interesting that y'all didn't really start fully collaborating till 2022.
Lev Omelchenko: Well, I think the thing is that, individually, yes, we were. I was there, we were all organizing around it. So we were already there and working towards working together. We met and talked about making a film in 2021 and it was like 'well, what does that look like?' I would say that a key moment in us being able to work together was bringing on our producer, Ike Rofe. Him taking a risk and believing in the project was really helpful and critical because I've been making films almost on my own for years, and it's so exhausting, and this struggle felt so overwhelmingly big to try to do on my own.
And Ike saw me pitching this film trying to explain what's happening, like 'Is anyone else paying attention to what's happening in Atlanta? This is huge.' I had reached out to him through an open call and when he showed interest, me, Nolan, and Ike kind of clicked together. Like, 'I have relationships and skills, Nolan has relationships and skills, and Ike has his understanding of how film production runs. I think the three of us can actually make this thing happen.' And once that clicked into place, everything else started to open up.
Both because of how we started working, as well as the other people we were able to bring onto our team. Like Jamie Chew, who was a producer in the film, and Annie Woods, who's a producer on the film, and Nick Weissman, who's an executive producer. People started to appear as contributors and collaborators. Lorin Dent, who's an incredible additional cinematographer on the film. Mike Morgan, with [production company] Media Team, who is local to Atlanta. Because of how the movement was becoming so tense, I think everyone felt 'oh wait, this is it. It's now or never.' And that's when it really started to coalesce like 'okay, we're doing this.' And then once Tort was killed, that was truly, 'okay, now there's no turning back. We cannot put down our cameras. This film is getting made no matter what.'
I know this is a very generic question to ask documentary filmmakers, but how do you know when to end the movie? Because in doing my research I found that the RICO charges [brought against 61 activists by the state] have been dropped at this point.
Nolan Huber: They were dismissed, but it's under appeal. So that's why we say "they are still facing." It's still possible. That's why we put it that way. Because by the time that we did finish the film, the charges had been dismissed by a judge. And we had a slide that said that. But then we were like, 'well, that doesn't mean they can't come back.' And because they can come back, we didn't want anybody to get the idea that that part of the struggle was over.
Lev Omelchenko: And the domestic terrorism charges have not been dismissed. So we were like, 'I think this is pretty safe to say for a while.' Unfortunately.
Right, these stories don't end because reality doesn't give us endings to narratives. So how did you all decide when it was time?
Nolan Huber: It was really hard. I think it was also hard for folks who were organizing around it to know, 'is this over? Are we done? Have we lost?' Even with the ribbon cutting of cop city, they rushed it out and it wasn't fully done and they were just trying to have a press day saying like, 'oh, we opened it.' But the movement had always done this chant, "If you build it, we will burn it." And so there was always this question, 'is somebody just gonna burn that down?' I think anytime you're participating in a movement like this that has so much momentum and as that momentum seems to get sucked into the court processes and things like that, you're really going, 'okay, what now?'
But of course, we were also like, 'Do we follow the story through all of the effects that it has on the defendants?' There are so many ways that it could have kept going and kept going. And I think one of the biggest helps ... in general, because Lev and I are so invested in this. We're so deeply invested in the community. Our emotions, our grief, all of those things are caught up in this struggle in Atlanta. We've put years of work into this - Having an editor who did have a bit more distance from it was so crucial. Emily Yue, who edited the film, did such a brilliant job, and really was able to push me and Lev on certain things when they just felt like we were too close to the story to be able to see them. So I think in a lot of ways, it was our editor who helped solidify that [where the film ends].
But we were still filming rallies and things like that through much of the editing process. The edit was going on and we were still showing up with our cameras sometimes, because you never knew. And because we knew that we were building an archive of this really powerful movement.
Lev Omelchenko: There are some things that repeat in different Q&As. One of them is that in trying to build the largest police training center, they also built the largest activist training ground in the United States. Another thing I say is 'this is a millennia long struggle.' That's what people in the movement would say. Meaning that the ability to fight cop city was directly tied to the infrastructure that was developed during the 2020 uprisings, and the 2016 Standing Rock land defense, and all of these struggles owe their debts to the Black Panthers in the 60s and the indigenous struggles. You go back far enough and it's all interconnected. We're on this long line of struggles, one comes after the other.
And I think it is in the state's interest to make it be, 'no, everything is discrete and disconnected.' That's part of how they alienate us from ourselves, from each other, from the land, from our history. So I don't personally believe that anything truly ends, it just transforms and moves into the next thing. But a film does have a beginning, middle, and an end. And I think what the movement really accomplished in a big way is it carried the fire from 2020, from the burning of the Wendy's and all that collective rage. And it carried that energy until the protests for Palestine emerged.
Because really when it cuts to black and "2 years later," that's November of 2023. And that's really when people realized there was -- a weapons manufacturer, there was a university -- somebody who was helping fund an ongoing genocide in their own communities. So it felt like all over the country, people didn't have to come to Atlanta to fight the struggle. They could engage with it much more locally, and it truly felt like 'oh, I am part of a movement.' People all of a sudden could join a movement at home.
And at the same time, cop city was being built and highly militarized. And so it really did feel like that fire was able to move more broadly throughout the country. And there were a lot of people that came to Atlanta who took those skills and knowledge and went back to wherever they were from and then would go out and organize in their own communities. So that's where it felt spiritually like the end [of the film]. It just so happened to be around the same time [as the rise in protests for Palestine], but sometimes that's how these things just naturally flow and act.
I think transform is a very good word for it.
Nolan Huber: Energy cannot be created or destroyed and only transformed, it's gonna find a new avenue.
Off the talk of literal and metaphorical fire, in my review I said I'm sure you two would never advocate for targeted arson. But the reality the film portrays does seem to argue that may be the only way to make a difference. So I'm curious if y'all do have any strategies or ways of making a difference that you would advocate for.
Lev Omelchenko: One thing I would say is: Whatever it is you decide you want to do, it is a lot easier to have the courage to do it when you know you have community support. And community support takes a lot of different forms. It's a jail solidarity fund like the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, to be able to bail people out of jail, get them lawyers, help them cover their expenses. It's people who are medics in the streets who can take care of you when you've been tear gassed or maybe injured by the police. It's people who can take care of kids when you go to city hall and try to advocate for your cause. It might be going to city hall sometimes, too. I think what the movement to stop cop city did is show that there's a lot of different ways to participate.
That being said, I also just think the reality on the ground was the thing that was most successful at preventing construction -- just in plain terms -- was that while people were there, in the woods, construction could not begin. They could only begin construction when the people were gone. And so that is just the reality that I think our film depicts.
Nolan Huber: Yeah, I would never advocate for any form of illegal behavior, and I think that in a lot of ways, the illegal actions were the only things that were ultimately -- if the goal was to stop cop city, the thing that stopped cop city was often not legal behavior.
Lev Omelchenko: And "legality." At any moment, abortion can become illegal, supporting people who help people get abortions can become illegal. Something we like to remind people of, as filmmakers whose film is abolitionist in its message -- because of the people who were part of the struggle -- it really is the police that maintain a very high level of criminality in this country.
The people who extract all our resources, poison our rivers, bomb children's schools abroad. All of that very high level, very extreme criminality, is maintained and perpetuated because there is a very armed, powerful police state to maintain that status quo. And at any moment, your rights can be infringed upon because it has been decided that you don't have those rights. And the police will be there to make sure that those rights are taken away.
I like that as an endpoint, but is there anything that y'all have not been able to talk about that you would want to; politically, filmmaking, anything in relation to the film?
Lev Omelchenko: As part of the movement, I traveled to Arizona when people were trying to get the insurance company to drop the contract. And I did an interview with one of the indigenous elder activists from Northern Mexico there and I asked them the same question, "Is there something that you want to add?" after I interviewed them. And what they said is: "You never know if you have 50 years, five years, or five minutes on this planet. At the end of the day, we're all becoming ancestors, and you have to decide: do you want to be the type of ancestor people look up to or make up for?" And I think this is a film where a lot of people made their decision very clear.