A film like a mushroom web

In 2012, I travelled along the Transalpina over the Carpathians with my family. Coming from the north of Sibiu, you see nothing but forests for a long time. Then, virtually out of nowhere, we came across a huge marsh. There were tonnes of porcini mushrooms and berries lying around everywhere and being loaded. We stopped briefly to take a look at the hustle and bustle. A second glance revealed the economic necessity of the seemingly romantic tent camp on the edge of the market. This image is etched in my memory. In 2014, I went back to see if I could find this place again and if what I remembered had actually happened - and that was the starting signal for the film.

We applied for project funding from Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein in 2016 and used the money to go there for a three-week research shoot. Our aim was to find an approach and possible protagonists. We also had a camera with us to take test shots - this was very helpful for the actual film shoot a year later, as most people in the valley remembered us. We stayed for the whole mushroom season from July to October - so the local people had the opportunity to get to know us better.

The shoot was physically very demanding at times. The weather and the landscape conditions were always a challenge. We sometimes had to drive for two hours in the back of a pick-up truck through difficult terrain at 4 a.m. in the rain and then follow the pickers with camera and sound equipment for hours through the mountain forests. For the mushroom pickers, it was all in a day's work. 15-20 kilometres with ten kilos of porcini mushrooms on their backs. Up and down.

We stayed in a guesthouse in the valley, as we needed somewhere to store all the equipment and of course we also needed electricity. However, we also camped at one of the camps. It was a camp at the bottom of the valley by the river Lotru. One morning we woke up after a rainy night and the river had flooded the whole camp. This moment can now also be seen in the finished film.

Getting up in the middle of the night to be the first at the mushroom spots and to use the first light. What's more, despite the competition, the harsh tone and the precarious conditions, there was also something of a caring, supportive attitude towards each other.

We were actually planning to do that - here in Hamburg. The Strandperle with the large freighters in the background would have been a great place for a shot that would have revealed another level of capitalist trade flows. But then we realised during the shoot that we didn't need that at all. Western foreign countries were present in the mushroom pickers' tent camps the whole time. Whether it was the Hamburg bags of the local middleman, the Husum crab car or the Germany cap of a collector. It was almost impossible to escape. The fact is that the first-class mushrooms come to Germany and the second-hand clothing goes to Romania. In two years' time, you will see all the diesel cars on the roads in Romania that are not wanted here.