Karin de Miguel Wessendorf

A third of Europeans live in economic insecurity: Zero hours contracts, the fear of redundancy and stagnating wages have brought more and more people into poverty and precariousness and provided fertile conditions for the political extremes. This documentary focuses on the new working poor, the precariat.

When 31,000 policemen take action against 50 tree occupants and tear gas and truncheons are used, a 550-hectare "pedunculate oak-hornbeam-lily-of-the-valley-forest" becomes a symbol of resistance. Since 2015, director Karin de Miguel Wessendorf has accompanied the protests against the clearing of the Hambacher forest and against the destruction of the villages on the edge of the lignite opencast mining, the largest CO2 source in Europe. First it was only a rebellion of individual groups with different goals, but in the autumn of 2018 the protest against the clearing finally becomes one broad supraregional movement.