Olanda

A rampant mycelium. A starry sky above Romania’s Carpathian mountains. These first two images define the dimensions of Olanda: Details and fine structures on the one hand, constellations and the vast whole on the other. The film revolves around a seasonal product of the local area – the mushroom – and mainly stays with those who collect it, with the humans to whom it comes closest, on the forest paths, in tents, on car journeys and in conversation. From here, it keeps on branching out like so many rhizomes, following each new pathway, all of which relate to money: to local and international traders, to an improvised shoe market in a clearing, to gambling among colleagues. The film narrates these industrial cycles by taking on a mushroom-like structure itself, without ever losing its theoretical centre along the way. This is not only an analysis of economic structures, but the sensual document of the rhythm of daily life in the forest as experienced by the mushroom collectors, the first link in the supply chain. In the cinema, it becomes an audiovisual mushroom trip into the magical world of the Carpathians. (Berlinale)