Aïlo’s Journey

This morning, I went to the movies with the kids to see the French-Finnish movie “Aïlo: Une odyssée en Laponie” about the new-born reindeer Aïlo. Featuring stunning panoramas of the High North, it was an incredibly beautiful but still intimate film about Aïlo’s first year in life. While highly anthropomorphic with a very human narrative imposed on nature, it was nevertheless a powerful reminder of the world that is now being pushed to its limits by industrial forestry, mining and energy extraction. As an ecomodernist, I of course had to object slightly to the narrator’s suggestion that leaving nature will ultimately “extinguish” humanity. I would rather say that the opposite is true, that we need to further liberate nature, both for our own sake and to make deep rewilding possible.