Code of Survival

Code of Survival

A film by Bertram Verhaag.In ger­man language.

The film opens with far­mers in the USA. Here, every year, the fields are spray­ed with mil­li­ons of ton­nes of “Roundup”, a pesti­ci­de who­se main acti­ve ingre­di­ent is the che­mi­cal gly­pho­sa­te. Multinational che­mi­cal com­pa­nies mar­ket Roundup for use with plants which are gene­ti­cal­ly modi­fied to be resistant to it. The idea is that far­mers can app­ly the poi­son to lar­ge swa­thes of farm­land, kil­ling ever­y­thing except their crop. But this wea­pon is losing its power. Nature is crea­ting gly­pho­sa­te-resistant weeds which spread at a bibli­cal rate and grow incre­di­bly fast – allo­wing them to quick­ly over­power and kill the crops. We meet far­mers who’ve been dri­ven to despe­ra­ti­on. No lon­ger able to con­trol the­se “super­weeds”, they have no choice but to aban­don huge are­as of good-qua­li­ty farm­land – losing their liveli­hoods in the process.

The film explo­res poi­sons such as Roundup and the ways in which they have see­ped into our lives: alt­hough Germany is vir­tual­ly GM-free, gly­pho­sa­te can now be detec­ted in all of our bodies. Using powerful images, the film explains how the lar­ge-sca­le appli­ca­ti­on of poi­son is des­troy­ing soil bio­lo­gy, caus­ing a glo­bal drop in soil fertility.

Deutschland 2017, 95 Min.
Regie: Bertram Verhaag
Kamera: Waldemar Hauschild, Gerald Fritzen
Schnitt: Hauke von Stietencron, Corinna Lösel, Melanie Singer, Verena Schönauer