It starts with news about the oak processionary caterpillar. But look closer and the caterpillar turns out to be part of something larger: the oak tree, the robin, moths, the stag beetle and people too. Gemeenschap van Leven (“A Community of Life”) shows how fragile and at the same time how resilient that community is, and asks which stories and ways of living could emerge if we put that connection first.

Filmmaker Rik van der Linden made the film with ecologist and philosopher Matthijs Schouten, as part of the European LIFE project on the oak processionary caterpillar. At Wildlife Film Festival Rotterdam 2025 it won the Audience Award with a rating of 4.9 out of 5, the highest score the festival has ever given. More than 10,000 people in the Netherlands and Flanders have seen it so far. The film is in Dutch.