International Feature Film Competition
In the remote Mexican highlands of Monte Virgen, forest ranger Julia uncovers a network of illegal loggers destroying the protected land she’s sworn to protect. When her community refuses to help, she must stand alone against the devastation threatening both her home and her beliefs. Shot with non-professional actors near El Triunfo Natural Reserve, ‘The Reserve’ is a haunting portrayal of strength, sacrifice, and dignity amid the fight for environmental justice.
In the remote Mexican highlands of Monte Virgen, forest ranger Julia uncovers a network of illegal loggers destroying the protected land she’s sworn to protect. When her community refuses to help, she must stand alone against the devastation threatening both her home and her beliefs. Shot with non-professional actors near El Triunfo Natural Reserve, ‘The Reserve’ is a haunting portrayal of strength, sacrifice, and dignity amid the fight for environmental justice.
While most residents of Monte Virgen struggle to bring in their coffee harvest, forest ranger Julia discovers that a band of illegal loggers is cutting deep into the nearby protected reserve. Determined to stop the devastation, she turns to neighbours and local leaders for help, only to meet a wall of fear, silence, and quiet betrayal. As support falls away, Julia continues the fight alone. Patrol after patrol, the forest thins and the horizon opens where canopy once stood. The work of safeguarding the land becomes a test of endurance, and the lines between duty, survival, and sacrifice begin to blur.
Isolated amid the encroaching deforestation, she confronts the slow disappearance of her world and must decide how much she is willing to lose to preserve what she loves most. The film observes the fragile coexistence between humanity and nature with quiet intensity. Dedicated to real-life environmental defenders who risk their lives to protect their land, ‘The Reserve’ transforms a local struggle into a universal meditation on courage, integrity, and hope. It is both an environmental elegy and an act of resistance: a portrait of one woman standing her ground as the landscape around her recedes, and a reminder that the faintest light can still be carried forward.
Isolated amid the encroaching deforestation, she confronts the slow disappearance of her world and must decide how much she is willing to lose to preserve what she loves most. The film observes the fragile coexistence between humanity and nature with quiet intensity. Dedicated to real-life environmental defenders who risk their lives to protect their land, ‘The Reserve’ transforms a local struggle into a universal meditation on courage, integrity, and hope. It is both an environmental elegy and an act of resistance: a portrait of one woman standing her ground as the landscape around her recedes, and a reminder that the faintest light can still be carried forward.
