Full Metal Village

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Full Metal Village

Directed by	Sung Hyung Cho
Produced by	Helge Albers Roshanak Behesht Nedjad Konstantin Kröning
Written by	Sung Hyung Cho
Starring	Uwe Trede Lore Trede Klaus H. Plähn Irma Schaack Eva Waldow
Music by	Peyman Yazdanian
Cinematography	Marcus Winterbauer
Editing by	Sung Hyung Cho
Distributed by	Zorro Film (Germany) (Theat.)
Release date(s)	19 April 2007
Running time	90 min.
Country	Germany
Language	German
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The 2007 documentary Full Metal Village examines the lives of the residents of a small German village in the Schleswig-Holstein region, Wacken, in a series of interviews and visual tableaux as it prepares for the annual Wacken Open Air Festival. In the style of a traditional German heimat film, the director Sung Hyung Cho explores the relationship of the 1,800 resident townsfolk and the brief annual influx of 40,000 metal enthusiasts^[1] who attend the open-air concert.

The slow, cynically irreverent tone of the film lends an air of the absurd to both sides of the proceedings including elderly villagers who confess to have 'heard' that the concert-goers worship Satan, and over-enthusiastic concert-goers headbanging to the traditional regional anthem played by a local uniformed band to open the festival.

[edit] Awards

The film has so far garnered all three awards for which it has been nominated^[2]: the 2007 Best Documentary at the Guild of German Art House Cinemas, the 2006 Best Documentary at the Hessian Film Award (prior to the film's theatrical release) and the 2007 Max Ophüls Award at the Max Ophüls Festival.