Gossliwil - Five Essays on Peasant Culture and Peasant Economy, on Work, Property and Time

Directed by Béatrice Leuthold-Michel

The film authors cautiously approach the village of Gossliwil in Bucheggberg, Solothurn, with its 160 inhabitants, and sift through traces of a rural culture of survival under modern conditions without romanticization. Knowledge of the destructive threat of industrialization and the mechanisms of a global food market for the farming world is included in the research. The farmers themselves have their say; at the same time, their tradition is traced in pictures, deliberate narrative rhythm, repetitions and sayings. The result is a clever analysis of Swiss agricultural policy, whose clear structure never slips into nostalgia; a highlight of Swiss documentary filmmaking.