• Director(s):

    VENNEMANI (Jean-Michel)

  • Producer(s):

    SYSTEM TV, ARTE FRANCE

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2012

  • Language(s):

    German, French

  • Rights:

    TV, DVD, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET, VOD

Large corn fields, a few mowing meadows interspersed with boskets, streams: we are in the Alsace plain, one of the biggest floodplain in Western Europe. 

Rhine has dug the valley and supplies the big Ried, a large strip of wet land located in the Ill’s bed, a tributary of the big river. Sometimes a border, sometimes a road for trade, it allowed the region to dispose of a reserve of 50 billion cubic meters of water.  
Like every river, Rhine has never stopped to evolve. During the Middle Ages, some of the villages were completely destroyed by the lateral erosion of the river. Also, from 1840, numerous constructions were created to contain and stabilize this unpredictable river, thanks to the creation of a canal and of the establishment of hydroelectric factories. In the heart of the Big Ried, the Mutterholtz village owes its architecture’s identity to the materials taken from the environment in order to build houses: wood for the structure, as well as cob, a mixing of clay dropped off by the Ill and straw that was cultivated.