Full Metal Village

U.S. PREMIERE

Director: SUNG HYUNG CHO

The cultural divide between the good folks of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein and the heavy metal fans who have descended on their quiet community from all over the world could hardly be greater. Starched blouses, golden crucifi xes and dark suits meet studded collars, tattoos and shoulder-length hair.

The line-up of invading bands says it all: Cannibal Corpse, Grave Digger, Testament, Raise Hell, Death Angel, Sodom. Wacken has become a wacky place of pilgrimage for 40,000 heavy metal fans. And the returning folks of Wacken seem proud that their village is the spiritual centre of the world - at least for some, welcoming the strange city birds. And then the rains come for this crazy North German Woodstock ...Wacken recognizes that it is undergoing a fundamental change - from the restructuring of the unprofi table dairy industry to a new defi nition of their centuries-old rural identity. Perhaps that’s what farmer Trede means when he says: “It’s more profi table to milk people than cows.” Berlin-based Korean fi lmmaker Cho says she specializes in fi lms about “otherness” and gloriously proves it here.

GERMANY• 2006 • 90 MINUTES • DIRECTOR: SUNG HYUNG CHO