TV tip
When the excavator comes: The drama “UFOs are more likely to fly here”
Marita (Johanna Gastdorf, r) and Natalie (Merle Wasmuth) look at the mining area in a scene from “UFOs are more likely to fly here”. photo
© Olaf Hirschberg/WDR/dpa
Huge lignite excavators are clearing the landscape in front of the Baumann family’s front door. Your village and its traditional bakery are in danger. The dispute over the opencast mine soon threatens to tear the family apart.
Everything must Go. An entire village on the Lower Rhine is to be made way for lignite mining. The butcher, the school, even the cemetery – the entire town of Niersdorf is said to fall victim to the powerful excavators. The Baumanns family bakery will also probably disappear. It is a generational business that the family wants to hold on to. Their struggle over several years is shown in the drama “UFOs are more likely to fly here,” which the first shows on Wednesday at 8:15 p.m.
Johanna Gastdorf, one of the busiest German actresses since the historical drama “The Miracle of Bern”, plays Marita Baumann’s widow. After her husband’s death, she runs the family business together with brother-in-law Claus (Markus John), his wife Irene (Petra Nadolny) and their daughter Natalie (Merle Wasmuth). Bakery.
Many small towns in the area have already been flattened. In the nearby neighboring village of Immerrath, even the cathedral is now being demolished. Marita’s late husband Franz always used to say that UFOs would fly before the cathedral was demolished.
But planners from the big city are now also coming to Niersdorf. Cracks are emerging within the village community: Should we stay or should we sell up and leave? Even the local pub has to close its doors for good after 250 years of serving. The Baumanns want to stay in Niersdorf as long as they can, “until the excavator comes.”
Everyone goes – almost everyone
The village becomes increasingly empty over the course of 2019, until only the Baumann clan seems to be left. In 2020 they are at the end and close their bakery. When the corona virus hits Niersdorf, Marita looks for a new job. She starts delivering food for an Asian restaurant while Claus, the former master baker, retires from working life.
Arguments flare up in the family when it comes to reburying the graves. Claus even throws Marita out and threatens to call the lawyer. Will the divided family ever be able to come together again?
Author Ingo Haeb has researched extensively over the years in the Rhenish lignite mining area between Düsseldorf and Aachen around the town of Keyenberg Alt (and Keyenberg Neu). He was inspired by real events for the film. The starting point of the story surrounding the Baumanns is the demolition of the Immerath Cathedral in January 2018; it ends in spring 2022 with the start of the Ukrainian War.
The story of the Baumanns is a fictional story, and the village of Niersdorf cannot be found in any atlas. But by linking it to real and true events in world history, the film appears to be taken directly from life and close to the viewer.
Lead actress Gastdorf said after the film: “Director Gina Wenzel has staged this story, which Ingo Haeb sets somewhere between reality and fiction, very sensitively and calmly.” That’s why it was a project close to her heart for her.