Regional Competiton

Beyond the race for technological innovation, cartel-like collusion in the auto parts industry and the perilous interplay of marketing and emission levels, there is a fragment of the automobile industry that is not yet so alienated, situated at the base of the Erzberg mine in Styria (central-western Austria). There, Cliff, a Nigerian immigrant, buys old cars, disassembles them for parts, in a dilapidated warehouse next to the federal highway, before reconditioning them for his former homeland. Carefully distanced and focused, film details Cliff's work and its effects on bodies and objects. More than merely documenting his skills, the film weaves together the visible and the invisible: the myths and histories pervading the material world, with the promises and mechanisms of the market on two distant continents, as well as life between these two worlds.