Colombian Film: | Proimágenes Colombia

Synopsis

Marmato, el Pesebre de oro (“the golden cradle”), is a mining town in the Caldas municipality of Colombia located on a mountaintop where for centuries locals have mined the land.  And, as the main characters of this documentary say, living on top of one of the world's biggest gold deposits is their only sin. Marmato, living a drama that in the last few years has become one of Colombia's most controversial issues – that of transnational mining companies – has witnessed Gran Colombia Gold, a Canadian transnational,  buy up their land to start a huge open-pit mining project. The local miners have been left without work and are therefore unable to make a living. The town has been left lifeless. Meanwhile a kind of legal limbo ensues due to various lawsuits.  Marmato is a formidable documentary that patiently chronicals the difficulties of a five-year struggle. Performing pain-stakingly meticulous work the film crew lived with residents, entered mine shafts during exhausting and dangerous workdays, and was present at the negotiations with the transnational's representatives.  Marmato is a needed documentary that touches on a necessary struggle and puts a face and name to the miners' dreams, reflecting the reality of so many other local miners in Colombia and across the globe. The film's debut was at Sundance 2014.