Catalogue > At random

In the city of Essen, the Zollverein coal mine, once the dynamic center of the region, has been closed for many years. Adjacent to the empty factory, most of the residential buildings and shops are now abandoned. People have moved away from here. However, in 2001, the deserted coal mine received the UNESCO World Heritage status. A museum and the new `Zollverein Cube`, designed in 2006 by the Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA), could be seen as an attempt to bring back life to the area. Yet the site appears only as a shadow of its former self; a vast, grey void is pervading the air. On a search to find some traces of life here, the film comes across an old veteran worker and meets visiting tourists from China, both with conflicting opinions on the old mine.

Cyril Schäublin was born in 1984 in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2005 he left to study filmmaking in Beijing, Berlin and Paris. In 2012 he graduated (M.F.A.) in film directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). Cyril Schäublin lives and works in Zurich and Berlin. Valentin Merz was born in 1985 in Zurich. Trained as a graphic designer, he moved to Mexico City in 2007 to study Art History and Spanish Literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. That aside, he worked as an actor, directing assistant and director on films in the US, Mexico and in Berlin. Valentin Merz lives and works in Zurich and Berlin.