Synopsis
“What can you do?” A cri de coeur we are going to hear quite often in this film about the last Mohicans of Grunau. A ghost village built over a deposit of brown coal in the south of Saxony-Anhalt whose inhabitants were resettled in the 1990s. The only ones left are the locksmith, the famer and the Norbert, whose house is being picked apart by woodpeckers. They form a strange community as the film opens in 2003. They still slaughter livestock together, help each other, former neighbours drop by and the farmer is so ceaselessly busy that it looks like he intends to stay forever.
The film is an affectionate portrait of the tough remnants of the former life in this defeated region in Germany. Memories of the past are still fresh, as are those of the town meeting where the West Germans talked the people into giving up their home. Six years later: the coal excavator appears like a ghost at the edge of the village, illuminated by the setting sun. The locksmith is gone, Norbert is definitely gone, but the farmer is still there. Until the last day. What is he going to do when he has to leave in spring? Sustained perplexity. He was never unemployed in his life. But: “What can you do?” This question is the film’s farewell to a lifestyle no longer able to compete. A 'Heimatfilm' without accusations or glorifications and with a cool soundtrack.
(DOK Leipzig, Matthias Heeder)
