Der grüne Berg

A film as political intervention: At the end of the 1980s, it became known that the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (NAGRA) was planning to build a repository in the Wellenberg, a green hill in the Engelberg valley of the canton of Nidwalden in Switzerland. Murer's far-reaching documentary focuses on 12 local farming families who, along with their children and their children's children, are those affected by decisions made elsewhere. Murer passes on their many questions to supposed experts: political representatives and nuclear energy advocates, as well as its critics. "In the course of the film, small 'rural communes' are formed in which all these people participate. DER GRÜNE BERG is thus also a film about democracy, or more precisely, an appeal by democratic means against the abolition of democracy." (Fredi M. Murer) To this day, the repository has not been built: in two cantonal referendums, in 1995 and 2002, the population rejected its construction and that of a tunnel.