Iron Crows

In Iron Crows, South Korean documentary filmmaker Bong-Nam Park shows how workers risk their lives for two dollars a day at the world's largest ship demolition yard in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where an average of 20 workers die every year. Ekramul is only 12, but poverty is more powerful than the law against child labor. Rufik remembers how it all began back in the 1960s, with a ship that washed ashore. Twenty-one-year-old Bilal barely escapes death with the camera rolling. The footage evokes an atmosphere of menace and danger, but the faces beam when a new ship comes in. Most of the workers send a portion of their meager salary back to their families, and they are proud of that. But Bilal has not succeeded in saving $700 in 10 years, as he had dreamed he would.
Best mid-length documentary at Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (2009). (Moscow International Film Festival)