1986

Lena is bored with her business studies, and she isn't really making much progress in her hobby of photography. And then the matter with her father. So, she gets involved in the dangerous business that he had been earning his money with. She travels with an 18-ton truck from former Soviet army stocks to the "zone" around Chernobyl to collect scrap metal there and sell it off to dubious scrap dealers. But in addition to the health risks, she must first win the trust of the middlemen. Lena initially needs the necessary "seed capital" instead of making a profit right away. Her boyfriend Viktor is supposed to be helping her, but their relationship is in crisis. He is cheating on her. Moreover, he has received a scholarship to study in Sweden. Staged with consummate ease, the portrait by the DFFB graduate Lothar Herzog swings between opposites. The images of a flat woodland and meadow landscape contrast with the modern skyline of the capital of Minsk in the same way as Lena's emotional world moves between antagonisms – courage and despair, love and jealousy, resignation and perseverance. MM