km 43.3 Transylvanian Timber

Synopsis

One of the oldest and longest small-gauge railroads operates in the so-called valley of water, a remote region on the border between Romania and the Ukraine. The entire valley can only be accessed by means of this railroad. The rail line is run by a Romanian-Swiss wood processing company, the third-largest producer of wooden doors and windows in the European Union. 
The workers are transported as far as 43 km into the valley where they chop down trees and load them onto the train at the end of the day. The train ride takes 5 hours. For this reason, most of the workers remain in the woods from Monday to Saturday where they find improvised accommodations in the dilapidated train stations that were built there around 1920. In addition to the loggers, a group of Romanian border officials also works in the valley. Equipped with busses modified for use on tracks, they monitor the traffic crossing the border. It is here that since January 1, 2007, the border to the E.U. now runs. Our film deals with this region as a zone, which borders are running in all directions at the same time and which working conditions seem like the return of the real into the New Europe.