The extremes of survival for workers in the 21st century.

Synopsis

The new film from the director of Megacities: 12 Stories of Survival. Today's manual laborers are no longer celebrated with hymns of praise. They must be content with encouraging one another that backbreaking work is better than no work at all... In the Ukraine, a group of men spend long days crawling through cramped shafts of illegal coal mines. Sulfur gatherers in Indonesia brave the smoky heat of an active volcano and the treacherous trip back down. Blood, fire and stench are routine for workers at a crowded open-air slaughterhouse in Nigeria. Pakistani men use little more than their bare hands to dismantle an abandoned oil tanker for scrap metal. Steelworkers in China fear they could be a dying breed...

An experimental documentary that focuses on the rebuilding of post-Katrina New Orleans

Synopsis

More than a year after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, some neighbourhoods have turned into virtual wastelands. The highest price was paid by the most destitute. They lost everything: homes, possessions, sometimes even a family member whose body was never found. Relocated to trailers, they are waiting for the authorities or humanitarian associations to dig their houses out from the rubble and rebuild them. This short film gives voice to the victims as well as to the volunteers, who wonder how useful they can be in the absence of a proper aid system. The filmmaker conveys a distinctive point of view in her almost surrealistic images of destroyed neighbourhoods. Like the volunteers who root through the ruins, she gleans memories from those whose lives were forever changed.