DOCUMENTARY

Chittagong in Southern Bangladesh a graveyard for the West's run-down or obsolete ships, massive vessels driven onto the beaches and left to be taken apart by hand using only the most basic tools. Poor farmers escaping the regular famine in the north of the country travel south to get work. Barefoot and with no masks or safety equipment, they work in the yards under incredibly dangerous conditions. The award-winning documentary features beautiful footage of the monolithic ship-yards and describes a systematic exploitation, which only very few of the workers can escape."The unfathomable working conditions we see in the film were not what surprised me the most; it was the management structures that drove people into an often fatal debt trap. What I find even more shocking is the fact that the rules of this system of exploitation are based on the fundamental principles of the economic system we are all a part of. Eisenfresser shows exactly where that can lead." (Shaheen Dill-Riaz) (Moskwood)