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

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.