Nature as protagonist: 21 films about the wild

Weekly collection in the app for the week of July 17, 2026.

Some directors film landscapes as backdrops; these film them as protagonists. Malick's prairies at magic hour, Herzog dragging a real steamship over a hill because the jungle demanded it, Reichardt's Oregon rivers, the Macedonian mountains where one woman keeps wild bees.

This collection of 21 films ran as the weekly theme in the I Like Movies Discover tab for the week of July 17, 2026, featuring The Tree of Life. Documentary and fiction mix freely: Honeyland and Free Solo sit beside the forest gods of Princess Mononoke and Kurosawa's Siberian taiga.

The collection

1. The Tree of Life (2011) Malick Featured A Texas boyhood in the 1950s, a stern father and a grace-filled mother, framed inside nothing less than the creation of the universe; Malick's most ambitious film, Palme d'Or winner. Cast: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken
2. Days of Heaven (1978) Malick Two lovers posing as siblings work the Texas wheat harvest, and she marries the dying farmer for his money; a simple tragedy shot almost entirely at magic hour. Cast: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard
3. First Cow (2019) Reichardt In 1820s Oregon, a gentle cook and a Chinese immigrant build a business on biscuits made with milk stolen nightly from the territory's only cow; a friendship story where the suspense is tenderness. Cast: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones
4. Embrace of the Serpent (2015) Guerra An Amazonian shaman, last of his people, guides two Western explorers decades apart in search of a sacred plant; shot in black and white from the forest's point of view. Cast: Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolívar, Jan Bijvoet
5. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) Herzog A conquistador expedition rafts down the Amazon in search of El Dorado while its mad lieutenant seizes command; Herzog, Kinski, real jungle, real madness. Cast: Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo, Del Negro
6. Fitzcarraldo (1982) Herzog An opera-obsessed dreamer schemes to build an opera house in the Amazon, which requires hauling a full-size steamship over a mountain; Herzog actually did it, with no effects. Cast: Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale, José Lewgoy
7. Walkabout (1971) Roeg Abandoned in the Australian outback, two city children survive only because a young Aboriginal man on his ritual walkabout guides them; beautiful, strange and quietly tragic. Cast: Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, David Gulpilil
8. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Weir On Valentine's Day 1900, Australian schoolgirls climb a volcanic rock formation and three never come back; a mystery that refuses solution and lingers like a dream. Cast: Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse
9. The Revenant (2015) Iñárritu Mauled by a bear and left for dead by his fur-trapping party, a frontiersman crawls through the winter wilderness for revenge; brutal survival shot in real cold and natural light. Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson
10. Into the Wild (2007) Penn A gifted graduate donates his savings, cuts off his family and hitchhikes to Alaska to live off the land; the true story of Christopher McCandless, generous to both his dream and its cost. Cast: Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt
11. Dersu Uzala (1975) Kurosawa A Russian survey team in the Siberian taiga is saved repeatedly by Dersu, an aging Goldi hunter who reads the wilderness like text; Kurosawa's ode to a vanishing way of living. Cast: Yuriy Solomin, Maksim Munzuk, Mikhail Bychkov
12. Princess Mononoke (1997) Miyazaki A cursed prince lands between an iron-making town of outcasts and the wolf-raised girl defending the forest gods it is destroying; Miyazaki's epic where every side has its reasons. Cast: Yoji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, Yuko Tanaka
13. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003) Kim Ki-duk On a monastery floating on a mountain lake, a boy grows into a man, sins, and returns, across five seasons; Buddhist parable as landscape painting. Cast: Oh Young-soo, Kim Ki-duk, Kim Young-min
14. Honeyland (2019) Stefanov & Kotevska The last wild beekeeper in the Macedonian mountains lives by one rule, take half, leave half, until a chaotic family moves in next door and breaks it; a documentary with the shape of a fable. Cast: Hatidzhe Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam
15. Close to Eden / Urga (1991) Mikhalkov A Mongolian herdsman living the old steppe life befriends a stranded Russian truck driver, then rides to town for condoms and comes back changed; warm, funny and elegiac. Cast: Badema, Bayaertu, Vladimir Gostyukhin
16. Tulpan (2008) Dvortsevoy A young sailor returns to the Kazakh steppe dreaming of a yurt, a flock and a wife, but the only eligible girl rejects his ears; deadpan comedy amid real dust storms and lambing. Cast: Askhat Kuchencherekov, Samal Yeslyamova, Tulepbergen Baisakalov
17. The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003) Davaa & Falorni A Gobi desert family's camel rejects her newborn calf, so they send for a musician whose ritual might move her to accept it; a documentary of astonishing patience. Cast: Janchiv Ayurzana, Chimed Ohin, Amgaabazar Gonson
18. Microcosmos (1996) Nuridsany & Pérennou Insects in a French meadow filmed at their own scale, where a rainstorm is a catastrophe and a dung beetle's stuck load is an epic; no narration needed. Cast: Jacques Perrin
19. Free Solo (2018) Chin & Vasarhelyi Alex Honnold prepares to climb El Capitan's 900-meter face alone and without a rope, while his girlfriend and the filmmakers weigh what it means to point cameras at it; palms sweat, guaranteed. Cast: Alex Honnold, Tommy Caldwell, Jimmy Chin
20. Meek's Cutoff (2010) Reichardt An 1845 wagon party lost on the Oregon high desert runs low on water and trust in the guide who led them there, then captures a Cayuse man who may or may not be leading them to it. Cast: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton
21. The Bear (1988) Annaud An orphaned bear cub attaches itself to a huge wounded male while hunters track them through the Alps; told almost wordlessly from the animals' side. Cast: Tchéky Karyo, Bart the Bear, Douce the Bear

Keep your place

Keep the collection on your I Like Movies watchlist and work through it at your own pace; the app tracks what is left. Every Friday a new themed collection lands in the Discover tab.

Questions people ask

What is the best film about nature?

It depends what you mean by about. As spectacle, The Revenant and Free Solo; as elegy, Honeyland and Dersu Uzala; as philosophy, The Tree of Life; as war between people and forest, Princess Mononoke.

Are the documentaries here nature documentaries?

Not in the TV sense. Honeyland, Microcosmos, The Story of the Weeping Camel and Free Solo are theatrical films about people, or insects, inside landscapes, with no narrator explaining migration patterns.

The week before: French New Wave and beyond: 21 films from sixties France. The week after: Heat on film: 21 movies where the temperature breaks people. See every weekly theme, or browse every guide, watch order and comparison.