30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Italian premiere

Every day, thousands of men enter the belly of the Cerro Rico, an ancient silver mine in the Bolivian Andes. To the indigenous and African slaves, it was known as the "man eater". The wagon enters the tunnels and the outside light becomes increasingly dim, until it disappears. The workers' laboured breathing mixes with the sounds of explosions, dripping water, and with their superstitions. The voyage into the bowels of the earth becomes a metaphor for a voyage into the human psyche which, in the darkness of the tunnels, gradually abandons reason and frees the unconscious, made up of fears, beliefs, and dreamlike stories. On reemerging, economic and family troubles bring the workers back to their difficult reality.

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  Christopher Yates

  Born in 1978, Yates studied at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion in Louvain-La-Neuve (Belgium). He has made documentaries Not Here (2009) and Retour à l’école (in progress) and has also collaborated with Belgian television. Reveka (2015), co-directed with Benjamin Colaux, has been shown at various Eruopean film festivals including Docville in Leuven, Belgium and Cinéma du Reel, in Paris.

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  Benjamin Colaux

  Benjamin Colaux, born in 1981, is a director, editor for several documentary production companies and art photographer. In parallel, he is working as a scriptwriter on the graphic novel Blue of Straw, and on sound creations showed in theatrical scenes and festivals. After Reveka, he is actually working on his next feature documentary, Austral.