Documentary | 30 minutes | Arte

It’s midnight, it’s cold and pitch dark outside in the forest. It’s Marian’s (62) turn today – he has to get out of bed to look at the ovens. What is the color of the smoke? Just one small mistake – and a whole day’s work is for nothing. Inside, Zbyszek (60), his colleague, continues to snore. The two men are charcoal burners and have been living together for many years in the forest in the Polish Carpathians, not far from the Ukrainian border. Their home is a simple shack with no electricity or running water. They produce charcoal – according to a centuries-old tradition. Day and night they watch over the chimneys. If the smoke turns blue, the wood burns to ash. That means: no coal – and no money. They used to deliver charcoal to steelworks and glassworks, today they make charcoal for customers in Germany. But the competition is tough. Big coal mills spoil prices. 15 years ago there were still more than a hundred places where charcoal burners worked. Today the profession is dying out in Poland. “I don’t know whether we’ll still be able to work next year,” says Marian. Other charcoal burners have already lost their jobs: Robert (41) and his father Andrzej (62) are still staying in the forest. They hope to be able to return to their jobs at some point. Until then, they regularly bike to the village of Cisna, six kilometers away. Here they get 2.50 euros an hour as day laborers on construction sites. But another life is unthinkable for them – the forest is their home.

Director
Vivien Pieper

Cinematograph
Dunja Engelbrecht (winner of the “German Camera Award”)

Editor
Hans Ole Eicker