Several billion tons of earth are moved annually by humans – with shovels, excavators or dynamite. Nikolaus Geyrhalter observes people, in mines, quarries and at large construction sites, engaged in a constant struggle to take possession of the planet.
Earth was filmed at seven locations where humans are transforming the planet on a grand scale: Entire mountains being moved in California, a tunnel being sliced through rock at the Brenner Pass, an open-cast mine in Hungary, the world-famous Carrara marble quarry in Italy, a copper mine in Spain, the salt mine used to store radioactive waste in Wolfenbüttel and a Northern Canadian tar sands site where the destruction of indigenous lands threatens local communities.
Geyrhalter contrasts these large scale projects with interviews with the individuals helping to realize them to highlight our fraught struggles for and against the planet. (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria, 2019, 115 min., English, German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish w/ English subtitles)
