Children of Utopia - Documentary about the Hutterites (1999)

The great social Utopia of the last centuries produced several attempts of "utopic communes". The "Hutterischen Brüder", one of them, still exists in the south of Canada. In 400 kibbuzlike communities 40.000 members are living in the wide landscape of the country. In a remarkable social order, they economize succesfully and support themselves by own strength. Since 470 years they hold on to their medievel traditions and the huttererlanguage. Social injustice and war service is unknown in their community.
The "Hutterischen Brüder" strictly refuse the modern media as an "devilish danger". But through friendship with some families, the director Klaus Stanjek took the chance to film the inner life of a Huttercommune. The "Children of Utopia" Thomas and Maria tell us about their everyday life in the commune. For the two "divine arks in the ocean of the worldly sin" their idea of the outer world stays shadowy.
A film by Klaus Stanjek
© 1999, Ventana
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Hutterites (German: Hutterer) are an ethnoreligious group that is a communal branch of Anabaptists who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century. Since the death of their eponym Jakob Hutter in 1536, the beliefs of the Hutterites, especially living in a community of goods and absolute pacifism, have resulted in hundreds of years of diaspora in many countries. Nearly extinct by the 18th and 19th centuries, the Hutterites found a new home in North America. Over 130 years their population grew from 400 to around 45,000. Today, most Hutterites live in Western Canada and the upper Great Plains of the United States.