Onze Natuur
A 7-part nature documentary series about wild Belgium.
‘Onze Natuur’ is an ambitious project to show Belgians about the wilderness in their own country.
Beautiful stories about familiar and unknown animals that evoke a sense of wonder to increase our love and respect for our nature. This is a story about winners, opportunists, fighters, but also about losers that might not be around in a couple of years. It is survival of the fittest in a highly fragmented country where you wouldn’t think nature had any place left.
The series has been received with an overwhelmingly positive response. It is one of the best watched series on Canvas so far.
My role
I’ve had several different roles for this series. Mainly I worked as an editor, where I had to go through hours of footage to find and create biologically correct stories.
Aside from that, I also had the opportunity to film a couple of scenes, including:
the hunting behaviour of a mole
the natural history of the orange tip butterfly
the messy nightlife of city foxes
the husbandry of ants
the courtship of pigeons
The episodes
Part 3. Air
The air is not empty.
Part 4. Wood
Nature needs time to take shape.
Part 5. Fire
Mankind shaped the landscape.
Part 6. Stone
There where humans live, nature needs to adapt.
Part 7. Our Impact
The behind-the-scenes of the series and also our nature.
Part 1. Water
Without water, there can’t be life.
Part 2. Soil
The soil beneath our feet gives and takes.
Part 7. Our Impact
The last episode is asimilar to the other episodes: aside from giving a behind-the-scenes of the making of this series, it also offers a look behind-the-scenes about how things are really going on in the Belgian nature. We hear stories from our cameramen, Pim Niesten and Dick Harrewijn, and from foresters and other experts that give further explanations.
For this episode, I filmed all the interviews and scenes with the foresters, as well as several making-of sequences with Pim and Dick. I also helped to direct and edit this episode.
Onze Natuur, de film
While we were editing the series, the production company decided to create a film as well as a sort of big teaser for the series. Since I have been working on the series as an editor, I was asked to help on the film simultaneously. With only a couple of months time to edit, we had to make a good selection of scenes that would make it in the film.
Most scenes were repurposed scenes from the series, but several scenes I have edited from scratch.
The film was released in autumn of 2022 and quickly became one of the more successful films in Belgian cinemas. Since the coronavirus pandemic, films struggled to get more than 100K visitors in the cinema. ‘Onze Natuur, de film’ managed to get more than 200K visitors in just a couple of months. The documentary was also awarded with an Ensor for Best Documentary.
