Harvest

When it’s harvest time, Sunday is a workday as well. The barn has to be swept clean, and if the cow refuses to nurse her calf, it will have to be fed by hand. Marko has just started to work on a larger farm in the Nuthe-Urstrom Valley, sixty kilometers south of Berlin. If he passes his exams, he will be able to call himself a farmer. Whether he actually wants that or not, he hasn’t quite decided yet. Beyond work, he doesn’t have many friends; the eleven other trainees think he’s somewhat of a loner. However, when Jacob, a new intern, shows up at the farm, Marko begins to slowly shed his outsider role. During the harvest while transporting the grain and re-locating the calves, the two young men get to know each other better. For one day, they take off for Berlin and after that, nothing is quite the same. A love story starts to unfold – but neither of them has actually considered just how open they want to live in the world.

Benjamin Cantu’s first feature film tells a rural gay love story and combines documentary-like observation and fictional dramatization in a highly original way. The filming took place on a large farm during the harvest, with an exact eye for the reality of agricultural life, the aspects of learning farming as a trade and the relationships between young farmers learning the business from the ground up and the more seasoned workers. Both actors fit in well with the group and the day-to-day work; the locals bring their own individual realities to the film’s story.