San Gottardo

Republic of Finland is promoting clean technology by organizing Green Mining seminars where foreign experts tell us how the development of the world is becoming increasingly expensive by 2050. The Earth is running out of resources and mining companies have to use increasingly low-grade metal deposits. Finland aims to be a model country for environmentally friendly mining. Its pioneer project is Talvivaara, which uses new biotechnology to extract nickel, zinc and uranium. Through several charismatic characters, the documentary film The Land Of Mine follows the rise of the biggest nickel mine in Western Europe and the ensuing disasters whose effects continue to reverberate in the nation.

10 May 1943. Something is spotted drifting ashore off the coast of Northwest Donegal, Ireland. Something that would change the lives of the local people forever.

OUT OF DARKNESS: THE MINE WORKERS' STORY is a documentary by Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY, USA). Historical film footage and photographs are integrated with first-hand accounts of UMWA history and of the Pittston strike of 1989-90.

A cinematic and introspective look at the residents of a Quebec town—once the site of the world's largest asbestos mine—as they grapple with their community's industrial past. Striving to honour their heritage while reconciling with their history and forging a new path forward, the miners delve into the intricacies of progress and healing.

The Duplex A86 is a 10 kilometer underground highway buried more than 90 meters deep. This concrete tube, measuring the equivalent of more than 30 lying Eiffel towers, is the longest tunnel in France. The result of a succession of technical prowess born from the imagination of visionary engineers, the Duplex A86 allows you to cross all of western Paris in a few minutes.

In the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, Fakhir, a father of eight, is serving in the Iraqi army. All around him, he sees innocent civilians getting injured by landmines, so he determines to disarm them with his own hands, using just a pocketknife and some wire cutters. He clears thousands of roadside bombs, mines and car bombs, knowing that every time he cuts a wire it could cost him his life—which he seems to find less important than the lives of others. In 2014, by this time having lost a leg, he starts working for the Kurdish Peshmerga, disarming boobytraps left behind by Daesh in and around Mosul. An enthusiastic home video maker, Fakhir collects hundreds of hours of footage of his day-to-day work.

Borinage left Henri Storck profoundly disturbed by injustice and social poverty. When he was offered a chance to make the film he undertook an in-depth survey into the working class and slums and shouldered his camera as a militant filmmaker. In a plot of Walloon slums he staged characters and situations as examples. All shots work on intensity, the filling of the frame, which gives the impression of being unable to breathe, of being trapped, closed in. And in the face of this overflowing misery is the emptiness of the expressions, the absence of emotion. Survival is all. But the message of hope is there, with the destruction of slums (the hovels are demolished as if getting rid of a tyrant) and the construction of garden cities surrounded by trees in bloom and a future of song, leaves one with the impression that man’s dignity has been safeguarded.

The Channel Tunnel linking Britain with France is one of the seven wonders of the modern world but what did it take to build the longest undersea tunnel ever constructed? We hear from the men and women, who built this engineering marvel. Massive tunnel boring machines gnawed their way through rock and chalk, digging not one tunnel but three; two rail tunnels and a service tunnel. This was a project that would be privately financed; not a penny of public money would be spent on the tunnel. Business would have to put up all the money and take all the risks. This was also a project that was blighted by flood, fire, tragic loss of life and financial bust ups. Today, it stands as an engineering triumph and a testament to what can be achieved when two nations, Britain and France put aside their historic differences and work together.