Cruel Logic of Exploitation
The documentary Iron Eaters presents the tough reality of the ship-breaking industry in Bangladesh. Sonja Ernst had a look at Shaheen Dill-Riaz s award-winning film
When work is an ordeal, stoicism is the only answer: a ship-breaking industry peon in a scene from Shaheen Dill-Riaz s Iron Eaters
The leviathans of the seas rise majestically from the sand of a beach in the south of Bangladesh. Old oil tankers and container ships await their slaughter – the unwanted waste of the First World . In the cutaway wrecks echo the deafening sound of hammers and the calls of the welders far across the sand. Bit by bit, the old ships are broken up.