Breathing Life Into Stone

Together with mourners, stonemason Michael Spengler translates life stories into stone. Step by step, the gravestones take shape. And a new connection grows in the people to their dead - and to life. A circus wagon and a freight container serve as a workshop for stonemason Michael Spengler. Here he receives people in mourning. Together they design gravestones that tell of the dead. The Neustadt parents have lost their 2-year-old son. In dialogue with Michael, they find words to express their feelings. Words become material and form. The child's rushing breath is to be reflected in a fragile limestone. Hardburg Stolle is not a woman of many words. Under Michael's guidance, she courageously swings the hammer to split an erratic boulder and feels a power that has long been buried. The Jacob family struggles to find the essence of their grandfather's long life. The nature lover, bon vivant, patriarch. What does an object look like that strikes at his core? Michael helps them beyond the limits of their imagination. Sensitively he encounters the material and the people and accompanies each family in its own way on the path that often takes months. Step by step, decision by decision. The film tells of this painstaking and intimate process and shows how the work on the stone makes death more tangible in the truest sense of the word. The stones take shape. And the relatives develop a new relationship to their dead - and to life.