Ten years after the bloody suppression of the workers’ uprisings, the dead are commemorated in front of the Gdańsk shipyard in 1980. The memorial service conceived by Andrzej Wajda could only be documented after sustained pressure. The resulting montage, which links images of the event with emotional reports by contemporary witnesses, was never supposed to be.

Coal briquets hit the waggon with a thundering sound, are loaded, unloaded and finally end up in the houses of Prenzlauer Berg. Renate Uhle is the owner of a coal shop run by her family since 1922. Together with her men – Klaus, Kalle, Manne, Erwin, Pummel, Felix and Würstchen – she sees to it that no one in the neighbourhood freezes. Work is hard, the afterwork beer obligatory, and Renate’s tongue quick and sensitive. Helke Misselwitz follows the workers on their chugging diesel-driven ants through the streets and the watershed year of 1989, sweats with them as they climb up endless stairs and listens to them through the cigarette smoke.