Festival Films A-Z

Trikolon Productions
Jeremy Hamers
Malmedyer Straße 8
4700 Eupen
Belgien
Tel.: +32 485 5716 84
E-Mail: jhamers@ulg.ac.be

Laurent van Eijs

Marika Piedboeuf

Ton: Origan Cannella

Wallonie Image Production (WIP)
quai des Ardennes 16/17
4020 Liège
Belgien
Tel.: +32 4 340 10 40
Fax: +32 4 340 10 41
E-Mail: info@wip.be

Synopsis

Burning sugar cane fields, exploited seasonal workers and 'El Gato', the cat. The cat hires the men who harvest sugar cane in the Brazilian village of Carmo do Rio Verde. One single company owns and leases the sugar cane fields and produces ethanol. 1,200 of the 2,000 workers are seasonal. They have to work in humiliating conditions, harvesting the burnt fields in order to produce bioethanol. El Gato promises them good wages and decent accommodation, for which he takes off 4 percent of their pay. The seasonal worker Sebãstiao Soares, aka Tiao, is just one of the many workers who come from faraway places in Brazil for the harvest. He writes to his wife Terezinha who has stayed behind in their home village with their small daughter: "The food isn't good and it's expensive, but we have to buy it from the company." He further reports that he shares a room with 16 men and ends his letter with the comment that he's fine and his thoughts are with her. But one day he is overcome by the work and injures his leg. El Gato refuses to accept any responsibility, saying that he did not employ him personally.Nevertheless, in his last letter, Tiao is optimistic, still unaware of the fatal consequences of his injury.

Using Tiao's letters as his only means of comment, Jeremy Hamers manages to produce a surprising effect -- documentary becomes fiction. The texts contrast starkly with the striking images of the seasonal workers' daily struggle with the sugar cane. With long and brutally beautiful takes, the camera captures the workers' daily existence, from waiting for the bus to cutting the charcoaled-black sugar cane stems in the burning midday sun, wearing tattered uniforms which are supposed to protect them against the sugar cane's sharp splinters.
The final credits bring the viewer back to reality and make clear that the film is not fiction at all but is about real living conditions in the 21st century. Tiao died the day before the film team arrived in Carmo do Rio Verde. "A couple of drops of iodine on his wound would have saved his life," says Jeremy Hamers.

Dates

12	02.10.2007	21:15	Filmhaus
55	06.10.2007	16:00	Festsaal