Raw Material (2011)

Vast steelworks' dreams of dirt-cheap scrap, Greece's environmental obligations and the Western dream of an army of illegal immigrants meet in a string of shanty towns in the shadow of the Acropolis. Which are trodden underfoot? Three Roma from Albania, two Indians, a Turk and a Greek: a mere sample of the endless army of desperados who recycle the metal of an entire nation; heroes of "Raw Material" and raw material themselves. Nightmarishly, from the dustbins of Athens to the toxic junkyards of downtown Athens and from the foundry furnaces to Lebanon's bombed-out Nachr-Al-Baret refugee camp, the metal they collect becomes the foundations of the insane world in which they-and we-live. Raw Material charts the course of this band of hunter-gatherers in today's Europe. It confronts the smell of an annoying but exploitable savagery. It documents toil in the burning heat and freezing snow which penetrate its heroes' bodies to lodge in its viewers' minds.