Stadt Land Fluss

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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 Urstromvalley district sixty kilometers 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 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 HARVEST (STADT LAND FLUSS).”

details

  • Runtime

    85 min
  • Country

    Germany
  • Year of Presentation

    2011
  • Year of Production

    2011
  • Director

    Benjamin Cantu
  • Cast

    Lukas Steltner, Kai-Michael Müller, Cristina Do Rego, Steven Baade, Florian Born, Eric Fechner, Christian Hahn, Charlina Ingold, Jan Jendruschewitz, Felix Kaminski, Simon Kirmeier, Katharina Körner, Christian Sauermilch, Tino Trempler, Tobias Weichert
  • Production Company

    Salzgeber & Co. Medien GmbH
  • Berlinale Section

    Generation
  • Berlinale Category

    Feature Film
  • Teddy Award Winner

    TEDDY Readers Award

Biography Benjamin Cantu

Benjamin Cantu is German-Hungarian, having grown up in Berlin and Budapest.

Initially he started to tell his stories with pencil, which made him embark his animation studies at the HFF Konrad Wolf in Babelsberg in 2000. After his BA he continued with directing studies at the German Film and Television School Berlin (dffb) in Berlin where he discovered his passion for documentary film-making.

In his first Assistant Director job he became co-director in an Arte production about Jewish life in Hungary. Afterwards, Benjamin focused on creating one-off documentary pieces for Arte and 3sat, at times in cooperation with Nils Bökamp.

Benjamin´s The World Belongs to Chaim, a portrait about an orthodox Jewish boy in Budapest, was awarded the Axel Springer Academy Prize for Young Journalists in 2007.

Following the completion of several shorts and documentaries commissioned by international broadcasters, Harvest marks Benjamin’s debut as a feature film director in 2011. The film is a hybrid of documentary and fiction film making, involving over 30 nonprofessional actors from rural eastern Germany. Harvest was premiered on the 61st Berlinale, and screened in over 30 film festival with an ensuing worldwide distribution.
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