Synopsis
This is the second part of Glawogger's widely praised trilogy on globalization, which started with Megacities in 1998 and was completed last year with Whores' Glory, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. The film's five enthralling chapters trace tough lives based on hard physical labor. The restrained soundtrack often consists of little more than magical-mechanical percussive sounds. Terror, togetherness and the mainstay of religion are the recurring themes in the workers' stories about their jobs. The first chapter "Heroes" shows mineworkers lying on their backs as they hack away in the bankrupt coalmines of the Donets Basin in Ukraine. The drudgery of their existence contrasts starkly with 1930s archive footage of model Soviet worker Alexei Stakhanov. In "Ghosts," tawny men carry baskets containing up to 115 kilos of solidified ore out of a steaming sulfur mine in Ijen, Indonesia, passing photo-snapping tourists as they go. In "Lions," butchers cut the throats of cows and goats in an open-air abattoir in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. In "Brothers," steelworkers risk their lives on the beach of Gadani, Pakistan, where they dismantle scrapped ships. And in "The Future," steelworkers in Liaoning, China wonder aloud how long their trade can survive in the face of advancing technology. The concluding epilogue shows children in Duisburg, Germany playing in a theme park that was once a steel factory.