Düsseldorf-Premiere von "Holy Shit"

What happens to the food we digest after it leaves our bodies? Is it waste that is thrown away or a resource that can be reused?

In search of answers, director Rubén Abruña embarks on an investigative and entertaining quest through 16 cities on 4 continents. He follows the trail of faeces from the long sewers of Paris to a huge sewage treatment plant in Chicago.

The supposed worldwide solution of using the semi-solid remains of the sewage plant as fertilizer turns out to be a real nightmare, as they contain heavy metals and toxic PFAS chemicals.

Can excrement be used to grow food and alleviate the impending fertilizer shortage?

He meets the Poop Pirates from Uganda, who use their work and songs to teach people how to turn faeces into safe fertilizer. In rural Sweden, an engineer shows him a dry toilet that produces fertilizer from urine. In Hamburg and Geneva, he discovers residential complexes with decentralized sewage treatment plants that are not connected to the sewage system and generate electricity and fertilizer from human excrement.

In the end, the director finds solutions for the reuse of human excrement that improve global food security, environmental protection and hygiene and curb climate change.