Full Metal Village

Full Metal Village

After renting the movie, it is ready for viewing for 48 hours.

Language DE
Subtitle DE, EN, FR, ES
Genre Documentary
Country Germany
Year 2006
Director Sung-Hyung Cho
Production Flying Moon Filmproduktion GmbH (Berlin)
Length 90 minutes
FSK movie 0 years

As cows graze under an open sky, raging heavy metal music from world-famous bands erupts. This is the world’s biggest heavy metal festival, where northern German farmers from the Holstein village Wacken rub shoulders with international hard-rock fans.

The open skies of Germany’s Holstein region stretch out over grazing cows and houses filled with the smell of homemade cakes and the chatter of coffee mornings. At first glance this seems to be a peaceful, idyllic village just like any other in Germany. This is Wacken.

Daily routine defines the lives of Wacken’s residents. Take Farmer Trede for example. He proudly shows off his corn, growing at a rate of ten centimetres a day. For farmer Plähn, on the other hand, time seems to stand still for a while, as he sits smoking a cigarette in the barn, waiting for the milk to warm to 40 degrees. “This is what I like about the agriculture game,” he says with a sigh. 16-year-old Katrin is obsessed with calories and longs for a change of scene, to travel south, “go on holiday to Bavaria or something.” Meanwhile, family man Norbert tinkers with his motorbike. He has been unemployed for a few years, but “it’s just dead round here.” Then, he goes on on rambling about immigrants and how they are supposedly taking up all the jobs and goes back to his motorbike. 

But once a year, on the first weekend in August, Wacken comes to life when the village stages the Wacken Open Air festival. “Wacken rules!” is the battle cry of 40,000 heavy metal fans flooding into the village from all corners of the globe. They have come to celebrate their music and party. Black-clad, long-haired figures queue in front of the small supermarket, the fields are covered in tents as far as the eye can see and in front of the massive Black Metal stage, thousands of arms and heads thrash to the brutal beats of heavy metal.

Full Metal Village is a study of the bizarre, amicable meeting of two cultures and, going beyond the ephemeral music event, documents a rural community whose identity and stability seems to have become inextricable from the heavy metal festival. The complex debut film from South Korean director Sung-Hyung Cho has become an ambitious exploration of the spirit shared by a region and its inhabitants.

Image © Achtung Panda!

After renting the movie, it is ready for viewing for 48 hours.