Hacking at Leaves (2025) Movie Review: Getting to the Root of Unpleasant Truths

Johannes Grenzfurthner has done it again. The Austrian filmmaker rarely misses: his more recent “Solvent” mixes history and fiction to whip up a tale of unsettling horror that is impossible to forget. This time, Grenzfurthner’s unflinching approach to confronting real-life horrors culminates in “Hacking at Leaves,” a documentary that blends the United States’ colonial past with the atrocities faced by the Navajo tribe in a bittersweet cocktail of uncomfortable truths. Grenzfurthner goes one step further by honing in on the hacker movement and how a particular Durango hackerspace rallied for people’s lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each of these ideas is tackled at breakneck speed without cohesion ever being risked, but the questions asked are meant to disturb and provoke while no easy answers are presented. Those acquainted with the director’s body of work might perceive the documentary as a natural extension of his intellectual curiosities, but for those who are not, the intended impact might feel even more pronounced, as this is an experience that is bound to cut deep.

Some stylistic/cinematic choices, such as Grenzfurthner wearing a yellow hazmat suit throughout, or being constantly undercut by a demanding Uncle Sam (Max Grodenchik) might seem odd. Is this simply a satirical gimmick? Yes and no, as these inclusions are as deliberate as the frantic editing that exudes an aura of chaos (but is as obsessively meticulous as the director’s vision), and their connected significance builds up gradually over time. This is, after all, a thorough amalgamation of interviews, personal accounts, objective history, and worthwhile perspectives, which are woven together to create a suit that is meant to protect and suffocate.

The bloody brush of colonialism still seeps into the lives of the Navajo — who were among the worst hit during the pandemic — but hope springs in the form of a hackerspace initiative that might not have been a resounding success, but was more than enough to save countless lives. This is a documentary about marginalized communities. The atrocities faced by the Navajo people are laid bare here, along with their hopes and dreams, their cultural traditions, and their outlook toward the future.

Grenzfurthner breaks down the Spanish colonial occupation of Dinétah and the subsequent Treaty of 1868, and how the Navajo were forced to abandon their homes and march to their imprisonment during the Long Walk. Fast forward several decades, there’s an alarming lack of basic infrastructure, which is exacerbated by nuclear testing on their lands, leading to generational medical complications. These are not mere history lessons, as the struggles of the Navajo people are not treated as vague abstractions, but real, immediate problems that require radical solutions that might not mesh perfectly with the mainstream.

This is where the hackerspace aspect of the documentary comes into play, wherein these fringe community spaces often become sites for action-heavy activism during a global crisis. MakerLab co-founder Ryan Finnigan emerges as an integral perspective here, where he details the efforts to meet the requirements for functional Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) units for hospitals in Farmington and Durango. This obviously wasn’t as smooth a process as one would think it should be, as systemic, capitalist interests loom large over America and the rest of the world at the cost of actual lives. This kind of apathetic, late-stage capitalism that thwarts community efforts to help affected groups exists as a direct result of racial and socioeconomic oppression, and it is impossible to talk about one aspect without highlighting the other.

As Grenzfurthner awaits the world’s end at the Zwentendorf nuclear power plant, he wastes no time in getting to the root of the matter, as it is tiresome and futile to keep hacking at leaves. This is not his first documentary rodeo: one simply has to look at “Traceroute” and “Glossary of Broken Dreams” to understand how he presents hard-hitting information with accuracy and gusto, with a smattering of humor thrown in.

“Hacking at Leaves” nudges, rattles, and shatters the Overton window, and asks this seminal question: is hope a sentiment accessible to one and all, and how long must we placate ourselves with such facades before the tunnel caves in on top of us?

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Hacking at Leaves (2025) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
The Cast of Hacking at Leaves (2025) Movie: Johannes Grenzfurthner, Max Grodénchik, Morningstar Angeline, Chase Masterson
Hacking at Leaves (2025) Movie Runtime: 1h 48m, genre: Documentary