Best Documentary
Madagascar: Dicing With Death | Deadliest Journeys | Documentary
In Madagascar, “rosewood” is at the heart of everyone's desire. For illegal loggers, the last trees in the country are the main source of their income; coveted trees are the last on earth. In Masoala, a villager leads a team of five lumberjacks, the “festy festy”, “les petits malins”. For 5 euros a day, they have to face the torrential rains, mud, mosquitoes and oppressive heat. They have to descend from the mountain a log of nearly 500 kilos for three days. A grueling journey. To transport “the rosewood” safely, these men risk their lives in the rapids. This is the most dangerous moment in transport. Before they can use canoes, carriers must pass the rapids with rafts. The logs are then sent to China. In Madagascar, poverty drives thousands of peasants to the south of the island, "Ilakaka", the largest deposit of sapphires in the world. For ten years, this Malagasy "Eldorado" has attracted students, the unemployed, taxi drivers, a whole population of underprivileged people who come to seek their fortune. As far as the eye can see, the ocher earth has been dug by hand , a multitude of manholes approximately 1 meter in diameter. Ilakaka, anyone can try their luck, all it takes is a shovel, a pickaxe and a lot of luck. To find precious stones, a miner goes blind down the well, digs, fills buckets that another man brings to the surface by a rope. All that remains is to pass this land through a sieve to hope to find the precious stone. It’s simple, but dangerous. Problems arise as soon as the shafts are a dozen meters deep and the miners decide to dig the galleries horizontally, without shoring. In this Gruyere that the region has become, collapses are very frequent and, regularly, minors do not come to the surface!
Director: Daniel Lainé, David Geoffrion
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Published Aug 11, 2020
