But when it turns out that the Americans have bought the failing steel factory merely for speculation, the industrial town dies out.

The Austrian playwright Gustav Ernst depicts a town where people are sick and vomit blood on the streets.

After the World War, Europe was broken and sick, but scrambled back on its feet with the help of the United States.

The rose bushes that overrun the town at the end of the movie are reminiscent of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty.

Boermans shot the film in 34 days on site in Bois du Luc, a village in southern Belgium, and in the halls of Amsterdam's (former) Westergasfabriek.