To the Light

For a long time, China has been one of the world’s biggest producers and consumers of coal. Seventy percent of its energy comes from coal-fired power plants. The flipside of China’s economic boom is best encapsulated by the situation in local mines, where each year about 20,000 miners die in accidents. In his moving film, director Yuanchen Liu goes to the small village of Ganba, near the Kuxi mines. At a depth of 400 metres below ground, a young man named Hui works, just like his father and grandfather before him. Hui is well aware of the dangers surrounding his job. When one day a rat crosses his path – which in China is considered a bad sign – he does not take it lightly and stays home. Hui does not want to suffer the same fate as Luo, another of the film’s protagonists, who became confined to a wheelchair after a cave in. With unprecedented openness, miners describe their risky work, the only option they have to feed their families.