How a Wheel of Cheese Founded a Country

Hinterfotzing is a tiny Austrian village tucked away in the Alps. Everyone knows everyone, everyone argues with everyone, and above all, everyone takes enormous pride in the local mountain cheese.

Then an official-looking letter arrives.

Brussels, or so half the village believes, is about to ban their beloved raw-milk cheese.

For cheesemaker Zenzi Moierl, a woman with very little patience for bureaucracy and even less for anyone touching her cheese, the situation is perfectly clear:

This means war.

What begins as an angry evening at the village inn ends, several schnapps later, with a dubious internet form, an official stamp and possibly the most consequential fax ever sent through the Austrian civil service.

Hinterfotzing declares independence.

Unfortunately, the bureaucracy takes the joke more seriously than the people who made it.

Suddenly the village needs a government, a constitution, a border, passports, a national anthem, its own currency and, naturally, a ministry of defence. Mayor Sepp Grantl finds himself promoted to reluctant head of state, butcher Klaus considers three rifles, a tractor and a dachshund a perfectly respectable military force, while Vroni desperately tries to stop everyone from filling in any more forms.

Then an American crypto millionaire discovers the newborn republic.

The international press arrives.

Diplomats start asking questions.

The neighbouring village imposes sanctions.

A cow crosses the border.

And eventually a garden hose becomes an instrument of foreign policy.

The Free Republic of Hinterfotzing is a fast, wildly absurd satire about bureaucracy, nationalism, village politics, cryptocurrency and the terrifying power of paperwork that looks vaguely official.

A comedy about people who only wanted to save their cheese—

and accidentally created a country.