Strange Homeland

Uprooted to make way for an open brown coal pit: over the last five years the 700-year-old village of Otzenrath in the Lower Rhine region has been relocated. The villagers have been compensated and moved to a field 4 kilometres away. In “ultrafashionable” New-Otzenrath, there are no pubs and no community; just lonely people behind fancy new facades. Jens Schanze tells the story of some of Otzenrath’s inhabitants who he first met 6 years ago, when he was filming their last year in their old town. At the heart of the tale is cultivator Markus Mohren, a young man who as a boy wanted to become a football player or maybe be a stockbroker but had to take over the family business after his father died. It is 3 degrees colder here than in the old place, he complains. The new fields are not as fruitful as the old ones and the wind is constantly blowing in New-Otzenrath, making life difficult for the farmers. Otzenrath is just one of many villages condemned to disappear for the sake of an outmoded energy source, regardless of the disastrous consequences for people and the environment. (DOK.fest München)