Poverty in former coalmine area, Belgium

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Scenes from the documentary ‘Kids from the Coalmine“‘

Story

Winner of the IDFA Silver Wolf award in 1999, this extraordinary film explores the social consequences of prolonged economic underdevelopment. The film’s place of action is The Borinage, a district in the Belgian Hainaut province that had been a mining area for centuries. The filmmaker Patric Jean, who was born here, shows a region that reminds us of the Great depression years in the 1930’s. The film is of particular interest because it unravels the social fabric of a peoples struck down by unemployment, without any prospect and lacking the fighting spirit to change their deplorable living conditions.