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I had the pleasure to contribute a few drawings for the new film by my old friend Bernd Schoch. His film 'Olanda' will have its world premiere on February 8th at the Berlin Berlinale!

OLANDA a film by Bernd Schoch

OLANDA tells the story of mushroom pickers who, in the summer and autumn months head to the southern Carpathians of Romania to begin their search. Far from being a leisure activity, for many of the pickers this is a main source of income which they and their families rely on to get by. In makeshift campsites, they spend months between dense coniferous forests and the Transalpina road, where they sell the gathered mushrooms to passing tourists or people on weekend breaks. The majority of their harvest is taken by intermediaries, who sell the mushrooms abroad for many times the price.

The film takes a look at the coexistence of this temporary community over a whole season and sets this microcosm against a macroscopic economic level with whose representatives this community comes into regular contact.

OLANDA thus uses the rhizomatic structure of the fungus itself to describe a socio - political structure in which the smaller and the larger stories, the different motivations and circumstances of the protagonists cross paths and connect again and again.

A cinematic mycelium that becomes a symbol for the interconnectedness of a economic system which, through the focus on the pickers, the smallest member of this economic transaction chain, is critically questioned.

http://www.fuenferfilm.de/home/olanda