The moviegoers show: "It's all about learning to hope"

In Lusatia, the brown gold lies deep in the ground. 130 villages have been demolished in recent decades and the people relocated to extract the lignite. The coal will continue to be mined in 2022 and 2023 and the last village, Mühlrose, in the parish of Schleife, will be relocated.

In an artistic research project, the director and her team of artists followed the people, tried to address their emotions through audio installations and performances, to create opportunities to talk about what was and what they hope for in the future.

The film tells the resettlement stories of people, cemeteries, sheep and ants. Deep wounds and cracks remain when life is radically changed by lignite mining. But there is also hope for greater prosperity in a new place that will hopefully become home. As little as cohesion fits into a moving van, memories, images and dreams move with it. Not everything was better in the past, but who pays what price and who benefits when villages and life paths are planned on the drawing board? How can people cope with these contradictions and shape their existence and togetherness? The film also tells of leaving and returning in slow images. Can hope be learned? "You can learn anything if you want to".

A film by Annette Dorothea Weber, FRG 2023, running time 66 minutes