Tiger Mountain

This moving documentary gives a voice to the residents of a village in the Chinese countryside that has been polluted by the coal mining industry and now receives no attention whatsoever from the authorities. Here, almost three-quarters of all deaths are caused by lung cancer. The film follows the impoverished villagers for a year-and-a-half as they trudge through their daily existence, which is dominated by polluted water, thick plumes of smoke from the chimneys of the nearby power stations, conversations about sick friends and relatives, funerals, and worries about their children's future. One of the deathly ill former coal miners is Huaien Wang, one of the few to bring his case to court. Research into the causes of the pollution and death rate among the villagers was inconclusive, and promises made to the ousted farmers to share the profits from the power stations, or improve the quality of their environment, were never lived up to. Filmed in HD, this observational account focuses in on Huaien Wang's family, as well as the smoking chimneys of the coal industry that has changed their lives so dramatically.