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 four 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 fertiliser turns out to be a living nightmare, as they contain heavy metals and toxic PFAS chemicals.

Can excrement be used to grow food and alleviate the impending fertiliser shortage? He meets the Poop Pirates from Uganda, who use their work and songs to teach people how to turn faeces into safe fertiliser. In rural Sweden, an engineer shows him a dry toilet that produces fertiliser from urine. In Hamburg and Geneva, he discovers residential complexes with decentralised sewage treatment plants that are not connected to the sewage system and generate electricity and fertiliser from human excrement. In the end, the director finds answers to the reuse of human faeces that increase global food security, environmental protection, hygiene and climate change mitigation.