On October 7, 2023, Holy Shit received the Audience Award and the Best Film Award in the category Humans and Nature, from Germany’s preeminent Nature Film Festival, the Darsser NaturFilmPreis. The laudation states it clearly.
LAUDATION
Deutscher NaturFilmPreis 2023
Best Film | Humans and Nature
Whoever deals with nature issues quickly gets a feeling of hopelessness. We – the human species – are in the process of destroying a lot. The climate, the diversity of species. Can we still save the world? That is a big question. A part of the answer is perhaps closer than one thinks. More precisely: in the toilet bowl.
We experience the story of a transformation. How what we all carelessly flush down the toilet every day can become something wonderful and valuable: fertilizer. It takes 86 minutes to tell this amazing story. Not a second of it is boring. The story takes us halfway around the world. Each station highlights a new facet of the topic. You can guess how much time went into the research. How fine a line there was between the lighthearted tone the film found – and the cheap jokes that lent themselves to it.
But that’s not the only thing. It is also the people we meet that make the film so incredibly good. Men and women who research and act courageously and free of conventions, who all cherish the same dream: To return human poop to the cycle of nature. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Or, as one member of the jury said: He now has an urgent desire to create a compost toilet.
The winner of the German Nature Film Award 2023 in the category “Best Film | Human and Nature” is: “Holy Shit” by Rubén Abruña.
Congratulations!
© DNS | picture alliance | Frank May