A protest film rather sweetly dressed-up as a science-fiction discourse, Tobias Nölle’s essay film intriguingly offers up the notion of an android arriving in modern-day Germany from a future in which humans no longer exist, determined to discover what happened to machines and also try and talk with the King of the Humans.
The film’s original language title is Das letzte Königreich – Reisebericht einer Maschine, which translates as The Last Kingdom – Travelogue of a Machine, and which perhaps gives a clearer hint of the narrative structure to come. But this science-fiction character (which speaks with a woman’s voice) soon finds itself heading off on a rather different journey of discovery.
Opening with lilting, dreamy music the android arrives in a field, and initially tries to talk with trams (“ancient machines”) before admitting it would also like to talk with humans – or “our creators” – before eventually attempting a conversation with an escalator.
“Hi there, machine of the 21st century,” it says to the escalator, “This is my first time in the past. I’m looking for the King. Me and you, we could be related.” After a profound lack of response the android adds: “Hello!?”
There is better luck when it communicates with diggers and a large drilling machine, and is told to go to the exhibition centre and talk to the orange robot. Bemused to see robots being “locked up” at the exhibition centre, the android is eventually told by the orange robot to go the forest and search for Gordon – a legend to mechanical slaves.
In the forest it finds protesters scaling trees and fighting a large-scale development. “These ‘Forest People’ lived in nests high above the ground,” says the android. Here is where the film reveals its real intent and heart – this is telling the story of the real-life village of Lützerath where protestors clash with police and where the open-pit mine of Hambach is to be found.
Environmental activists have been occupying the trees, fields and empty houses in Lützerath, a farming hamlet near the North Rhine-Westphalian town of Erkelenz, where they oppose the eviction of the village as well as the plans of the energy company RWE which wants to extract the millions of tonnes of lignite that lie beneath the village.
The android rambles through the region, talking with massive machines who have no interest and who tell the (admittedly smaller) android to leave or they will call security. It wanders through the nearby community where there are empty houses and misty deserted roads. The film presents images of diggers destroying old buildings; massive open-cast mining landscapes; protestors clashing with police and dusty old disused machinery hidden away in ramshackle old buildings.
Filmmaker Tobias Nölle takes an engaging and unusual sci-fi/fairytale approach to tell the story of activists and locals who are doing all they can to defend the Lützerath ZAD [zone à défendre], where there is enforced eviction of residents and farmers by the police. The monotone android records the happenings in a matter-of-fact style, bemused and perhaps dumbfounded at the actions and behaviour of its fellow mechanicals.
Nölle shoots some disturbingly beautiful footage as the machines tear up trees and sink their metal teeth into a church steeple, but despite all of the compassion and protest, the sad conclusion is simple – the authoritarian forces have control and no King of the Humans can protect the protestors (nor the planet) from the desires of the corporate developers.
Switzerland-Germany, 2024, 88mins
Dir: Tobias Nölle
Production: Hugofilm features, Flare Film
International sales: Hugofilm features
Producers: Christof Enricher, Gabriele Simon, Tobias Nölle, Martin Heister
Editor/Cinematography: Tobias Nölle
Music: Thomas Kuratli
