SYNOPSIS:

Title: OCCUPY THIS Genre: action adventure / political drama Logline: Determined teenagers spark an Occupy The Forest revolution to stop the extinction of orangutans, tigers, gorillas, and other jungle species. Occupy This is a project of massive scale, akin to Apocalypse Now in terms of experimental filmography, radical social message, and international scope. Our goal with Occupy This is to ignite within the viewer a revolutionary spirit, to save our greatest jungle species from extinction. Our hero is Geoff, seventeen years old, fit, scruffy around the edges, passionate about saving orangutans from extinction. Geoff knows that orangutans’ last forest reserves in Indonesia are being chopped down to make way for palm plantations. Geoff knows that we’re all to blame, since palm is found in most of our food, cosmetics and cleaning products. Geoff also believes that the Controllers, a mysterious group of unnamed businessmen who saved the world from economic collapse back in 2018, are to blame for the lack of government-led protections for the forests and animals. In our opening scene, Geoff and his best friend Sprint pull a highschool prank - a fake orangutan hand in a chips bag, fake blood in the popular girl’s mascara, fake orangutan head in the cafeteria’s giant pail of cooking oil. Sprint is a wizard at posting content on the Dark Web, which is where all of the youth in 2021 go to access real information - they all know the regular web is highly policed and sugar-coated by the minions of the Controllers. Sprint puts the videos of the high school prank online, but it doesn’t go viral. Instead, Geoff gets expelled. Hence begins Geoff’s spiral into radicalism. He flies to Sumatra, where he has a night time close encounter with a giant, angry, male orangutan. When Sprint posts this video it does go viral. Hence begins Sprint’s spiral into online radicalism. Eventually, Sprint becomes hounded by the forces of internet Control, but he escapes with the help of some Anonymous hackers to a safe house, where he continues to run his aptly named Occupy the Forest movement online. In Sumatra, Geoff falls in love with the well-known peace activist Petra Kavas - a 24 year old woman devoted to being a Buddhist nun. Throughout our story, Geoff and Petra’s attraction is intertwined with their differing philosophies. Of course, Petra believes in her non-violent tactics both on the ground and at the United Nations. Geoff splits with her and tries to blow up a palm plantation’s heavy machinery compound. Sprint also has a love interest, Allison Cohen: an uber-rich school girl, secret Anonymous hacker, and, unbeknownst to Sprint, daughter of the Controller known as Cohen. This storyline allows us to peek into the inner life of the Controllers - ten men happy to manipulate these ‘young ecoterrorists’ so that this youth revolution, once it throws itself into true violence, must be quelled…. at which point they plan to take final control of their puppet countries’ militaries, making their grasp on dictatorship complete. Geoff’s escape from Sumatra, his reconnoitre with Petra at sea, his attachment to a very violent radical group saving the last Bengal tigers in India, his eventual rescue by a telecoms tycoon in Mumbai, and our witness to Petra’s video of the extinction moment for orangutans, all culminate in him finally realizing that Petra is right - only nonviolent tactics should be used to propel their Occupy the Forest movement. Only now, it’s too late. Allison Cohen and Sprint are about to launch a cyber attack on the Controllers - which will without a doubt throw our entire planet into economic chaos and anarchy. Geoff manages to thwart them, but lives are threatened, friendships forever marred, and both Allison and Petra are presumed dead. Determined to right his prior wrongs, Geoff launches a sit-in of the Virunga forest in the Congo, where Gorilla habitat is getting chewed up by open-pit mines for gold and coltan - our oh-so-necessary ingredients for our cell phones and other digital gadgets. Young revolutionaries from all around the world flock to Geoff’s appeal for help, Petra included, and Petra and Geoff finally consummate their love. Cohen, who blames Geoff personally for Allison’s demise, sends in armed American ‘black ops’ troops. Petra is murdered, along with other young activists. Sprint, and the Mumbai telecoms tycoon, are able to show the links between this massacre and the Controllers. They feed the info across all media, even mainstream media, and finally the middle class and middle aged parents of the world wake up to the reality their children are dying for. In our finale, Geoff speaks at the United Nations in Petra’s place. Geoff breaks the ‘fourth wall’ and reminds us, the audience, that we are the Controllers. With every dollar we spend, or don’t spend, we choose: verdant jungle or clear cut extinction. OCCUPY THIS is endorsed by Lief Cocks, founder and CEO of The Orangutan Project, an on-the-ground NGO in Sumatra and Borneo.

OCCUPY THIS