The film begins with the blasting of a rock face on the Erzberg mountain—and with a poem by Brecht from the interwar period, which reflects on the close connection between the Styrian automobile industry and the arms industry. Two long pans through a gray landscape follow, while mild men’s voices from the off attempt to conduct business on the phone. Of Stains, Scrap & Tires is a calm, documentary miniature that chooses the auto export business of three young Nigerians in the Erzberg region as a point of association and departure for formulating something more fundamental about the first and third worlds, movement and standstill, business, space, and freedom.

Director Sebastian Brameshuber demonstrates his appreciation of sculptural still life and fine moving-image compositions: car tires bounce through the garage as though possessing a life of their own, and the men perform physical labor on the car wrecks that they sell to Africa in whole or fileted pieces. Brameshuber hints at economic connections and processes, but is equally interested in the painterly traces of rust and paint, the inner lives of the motors and the view of the containers piled on top of one another in which the cars will be shipped.

The acoustic has an equal position to the visual in this staging: in the off, a small radio play takes shape from the sounds of tools, buzzing motors, and the rattling paintball gun. The precision of form keeps the narrative openness in check, the pointed montage delivers impressions, fragments of a very special average workday.; allows no overview, but instead, coolly protocols the interplay of bodies and machines, sticking close to the details of the garage, the fork lifts, paint guns, and heaps of rubber and rims.