Giant Hogweed: Learning to Unlearn
(2022–25, 32 min, 4K)

The research film unfolds as a hybrid work situated between documentary, essay film, and visual anthropology, tracing the Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) as both a biological presence and a cultural figure shaped by fear, regulation, and projection. Through field recordings, interviews, and close observational footage, the film follows the plant’s transformation from a
nineteenth-century ornamental curiosity into a legislatively condemned invasive species, examining how narratives of danger, belonging, and control become attached to non-human life.

Moving between detailed studies of the Hogweed’s morphology, landscapes marked by abandonment and governance, and moments of personal, embodied encounter, the film holds multiple forms of knowledge in tension rather than resolving them. Scientific discourse, subjective experience, and speculative reflection coexist, allowing contradiction and uncertainty to remain visible. More than offering solutions or moral rehabilitation, the film treats the Hogweed as an epistemic disturbance, using its presence to question how ecological categories are constructed, how fear shapes perception, and how