Harvest

During the harvest, the farm hands are out working every day – even on Sundays. The barn has to be kept clean at all times and, if a cow refuses to bond with her calf, then it is raised by hand. Marko is an apprentice working on a large agricultural complex in the Nuthe Urstrom valley district sixty kilometres south of Berlin. If he passes his final examinations he will be a fully-fledged farmer. That is, if he really wants to. But he’s not sure. He doesn’t have many friends outside the workplace and the eleven other apprentices see him as a rather uncommunicative guy and something of a loner. But when a new apprentice named Jacob joins them Marko slowly begins to come out of his shell. The two men get to know each other – during the harvest, whilst transporting the grain from the field, or removing calves from their mothers. But then, the two men escape to Berlin for a day and, suddenly nothing is the same any more. A tender relationship evolves. But neither of them has ever thought about how – and especially how openly – they want to live their lives. Benjamin Cantu: “During my research I helped out on the farm. This was when I began to believe that I could actually create an improvised drama in which the apprentices and farm workers were a natural part of the story. I was fascinated by these people’s lives which, after all, are so very different from my own. I was surprised to learn that, although the city isn’t that far away, it really doesn’t mean anything to them. I was influenced by the way they work together and talk to each other, and so together we created the storyline for Stadt, Land, Fluß.” –Berlinale