»The coalfields spat us both out.
You dug them up once.
We wanted to make a difference.«
Grit Lemke

The film opens with a long panning shot over a gigantic hole as far as the eye can see: the pits of the open-cast lignite mine in Lusatia; and the excavator is still digging itself relentlessly into the earth. Gerhard Gundermann, singer-songwriter and rock poet, revolutionary and utopian, toiled long and hard as the driver of this very giant excavator. A charismatic guy with a few rough edges: casual, resilient, captivating and stubborn. He defends his convictions uncompromisingly and, despite all his success, he will continue to struggle with them all his life. »What we have rejected him for is his fundamental stubbornness, his non-integration into the collective, his unwillingness to understand the principle of democratic centralism,« said an SED party secretary. After reunification, which failed to achieve ideals and visions, he was grilled on west-German talk shows for his work as an unofficial Stasi collaborator.
Director Grit Lemke was friends with Gundermann and she relates to him and their shared home of Hoyerswerda. In Coal-Country Song. Gundermann, domestic rifts within Germany, and global problems ranging from structural change to the climate crisis, intensify. Recent interviews with contemporaries of the time combined with the abundant archive material paint a complex portrait of society.