Hi! I'm a filmmaker in Florida. I haven't made any major films yet, however I want to make a short film involving a forest in my neighborhood. I was wondering if any historians knew a significant event in WWII that happened in a forest. I would prefer it to be a spy mission or one where the person has to be stealthy. However if there are no events along those lines, I'm fine with it being a big battle, even though that would be harder to make. If this isn't the right subreddit to ask this on, I'd appreciate it if you could direct me to the correct one. Thanks!
There's plenty of significant events taking place in forests in ww2.
Finnish long range recoinnasance patrols and raids against Soviet infrastructure took place in the forests of northern Karelia 1941-44.
Soviet partisans hid and fought from the forested marsches of the Pripyat 1941-44.
A long and bloody battle took place between the Germans and American forces in the Hurtgen forest Autumn 1944.
Norwegian resistance fighters, aided by Swedish military intelligence and civlian volunteers, slipped back and forth over the Norwego-Swedish border (almost all of it forest) 1940-45.
The Germans launched maje offensives though the Ardennes forest 1940 and 1945.
The Battle of the Bulge and the fighting surrounding Bastogne involved a lot of forest-fighting. (seeing as it took place in the heavily forested Ardennes, it seems perfect for your purposes) The Germans used english-speaking special troops to inflitrate the Allied lines and sabotage (Operation Greif) This could make for some interesting stories in a movie. Since the German advance was very quick and unexpected your characters could be soldiers left behind enemy lines after being bypassed by the advancing enemy.
For other operations, the British SAS was quite active in France and other areas of Europe, often helping out/being helped out by local resistance fighters. Due to the nature of guerilla warfare you could easily find events involving forests. (or invent a reasonable story involving a forest) I unfortunately do not know that much about any US missions of similar nature, but I'm sure there were plenty of missions with the U.S. counterparts to the SAS.
Depending on how historically accurate you wish to be, you could make a story involving a downed pilot trying to escape occupied territory/joining up with local resistance. With a bit of research on geography and local events it can be made plausible, since pilots were shot down all the time.
Do you want the movie to be heavy on historical accuracy or are you more interested in making a historically plausible scenario where the history is more of a background to the plot? Which nationalities are you interested in? I've mostly given you some general suggestions, but if you want more specific information you are welcome to ask.