11 Underground

Director : Chico Pereira

Writing : Chico Pereira

Image : Julian Schwanitz

Original music : Petar Dundakov

Sound : Jaime Sotelo

Editing : Okku Nuutilainen & Nick Gibbon

Sound editing and mix : Kinane Moualla

Producers : Kaarle Aho, Milana Christitch, Clara Santaolaya, Tonislav Hristov

SYNOPSIS 

Almadèn, a small village in southwestern Spain, is home to the world's largest mercury mine. A filmmaker living in Finland returns to his hometown. He wants to recreate the 1984 strike, the one that so deeply affected the villagers when the miners bravely held out underground for 11 days to defend their rights.

A group of 10 volunteers is formed: all want to pay tribute to their ancestors and agree to spend 11 days in the mine's tunnels (inactive since 2003).

As the experiment unfolds, the mock miners transform into genuine activists and begin to formulate demands to lift their village out of the socio-economic disaster in which it is mired. Above ground, demonstrations of support are organized, the national media cover the events, and the local authorities grow increasingly nervous. A social movement is born.

On the eve of the 11th day, having still not received a written commitment from local elected officials, the participants decided not to leave the mining site...

THE DIRECTOR 

After several award-winning short fiction films, Chico Pereira (born in 1979 in Almadén, Spain) turned to documentary filmmaking, creating minimalist narratives inspired by and featuring real-life characters. His first feature-length documentary, Pablo's Winter (2012), won awards at DOK Leipzig, IDFA, and Full Frame, and opened the MoMA Documentary Fortnight in New York in 2013.

Donkeyote (2017) premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2017 and won several awards, including Best Feature Documentary at the 2017 Edinburgh International Film Festival and the 2017 International Documentary Association (IDA) Creative Recognition Award for Outstanding Writing.

Since October 2018, Chico has lived and worked in Finland, where he is a professor of documentary practice and program director for the MA in documentary film at ELO, Aalto University, Finland. He has just completed his new documentary, Eleven Underground.