Terre des hommes? - Earth

Director: Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Several billion tons of earth are moved annually by humans - with shovels, excavators or dynamite. Nikolaus Geyrhalter, acclaimed director of documentaries such as Pripyat (1999) and Our Daily Bread (2005), observes people in mines, quarries, large construction sites in a constant struggle to appropriate the planet.

We visit seven locations that have been transformed by humans on a grand scale: mountains being moved in California, a tunnel being sliced through rock at the Brenner Pass, an open-cast mine in Hungary, a marble quarry in Italy, a copper mine in Spain, the salt mine used to store radioactive waste in Wolfenbüttel and a tar sands landscape in Canada.

 In closely observed, panoramic shots of plowing, hacking and roaring excavators, and in conversations with the people who operate them, the film ponders the question of how much earth has to make room for our demanding lifestyle.

„We walk all over it every day of our lives. We plow it, we dig it and we drill it; we cover it up with concrete. We map it and we measure it; we draw our borders onto it; and we imagine that it belongs to us. We live by what it produces and we bury our dead in it. We take its existence for granted; it seems invincible, indestructible. If we consider our planet to be an organism, its crust - just 40 kilometers thick - is its most delicate organ by far.” (Austrian Films)