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create@francodubini.com

Writer & Director : Franco Dubini
Captured: Franco Dubini
Edited: Franco Dubini

Green Legacy - Ethiopian Government

Documentary

When I arrived in Ethiopia, I knew the numbers were extraordinary: more than 20 million people were expected to plant trees on the same day.

But numbers rarely make you feel anything. My challenge was to find the human story inside that scale — to get close enough to understand what it means when an entire country decides, quite literally, to plant its future.

Director, cinematographer, writer & editor.

I developed the narrative, directed and filmed on location in Ethiopia, and led the film through post-production — from story structure and voice-over to edit, sound and final image.

The Challenge

How do you tell the story of 20 million people planting trees on the same day without reducing it to statistics?

The challenge was to turn an enormous environmental initiative into a human story, and capture its scale without losing its intimacy.

The Idea

The Outcome

Follow the people, not the numbers.

Move between individual gestures and the extraordinary scale of a nation acting together, using one day of tree planting as a lens into Ethiopia’s relationship with land, community and the future.

The Approach

A small, mobile crew documented the day from the ground, combining cinematic observation, aerial imagery, interviews, and narration.

The film was shaped in the edit around contrast:
one person / millions of people,
one tree / an entire landscape,
one day / a generational ambition.

Role
& Contribution

A short experimental documentary, that transforms a national environmental campaign into a story about collective action and what becomes possible when millions of individual actions happen together.

The film was subsequently submitted to international film festivals.