This documentary tackles a difficult and politically sensitive East German environmental issue taking place in the early 1980s. South of Leipzig, villages are being demolished to make way for open-pit mining. For almost four years, the film crew follows two of these communities and, as the landscape changes, so do the lives of the people. It is a struggle for the older generation, in particular, to leave their familiar homes, but some of the younger people enjoy the unaccustomed comforts of newly-built apartment buildings. This film calls on allegories about the loss of homeland and the destruction of nature in the name of progress and prosperity; the birth of baby Manuela represents the hope of a new beginning.