Synopsis
Dortmund: former steel capital of Germany. Here 400 Chinese workers are dismantling a monumental industrial complex in order to reassemble it in China. Despite the harsh working conditions and minuscule wages, they have not lost sight of their goal: to turn the industrial plant into gold back home.Even though the last German workers at the coking plant are supposed to help the Chinese dismantle their own workplace, the enormity of the task and their own uncertain futures have left them speechless. Their only tactic for survival is to delay and hinder the work.
But the dismantling can no longer be stopped. By the end of the year, the plant is crated up and shipped to China, leaving behind an vast wasteland. In concentrating on this small, concrete slice of reality,
LOSERS AND WINNERS reveals a larger picture of the tremendous upheavals taking place around the world today. Through the protagonists' humour, charm, and scurrility, the film portrays the collision of two very different worlds. Visually mesmerizing images of the dismantling and vanishing of the plant are sprinkled with touching human stories which cross cultural barriers.
LOSERS AND WINNERS is a film about globalization, without the word ever being spoken
