Documentary Competition

PEPITE NELLA NEBBIA
Nuggets in the Mist
Adriano Zecca, SWITZERLAND, 2003, 27', col., video
Director Adriano Zecca
Script Adriano Zecca
Screenplay Nino Gorio
Cameraman Adriano Zecca
Editing Giuseppe Palomba, Eloy Zecca
Production Federico Jolli per TSI
Distribution TSI

On a mountain in southern Ecuador, circled by a persistent blanket of thick cloud, a landslide owing to the rain caused by "El Nino" uncovers a vein of gold. The news spreads quickly, and from below, a horde of locals desperately fling themselves on the newly discovered gold peak and consequently founding a village full of slums, with the ironic name Bella Rica. The hope of rapid enrichment, or simply a better life, is shattered immediately. Work in the mine is dangerous and precarious; the unhealthy climate makes life still more desperate. The children scratch about all day in search of specks of gold; there is no school, not even a hospital. Men have started to die due to the dangers involved in gold extraction. Only the intervention of a non profit organisation has been able to bring some hope to life on this eternally cloud covered mountain.

DIRECTOR
Adriano Zecca was born in Milan in 1945. He has been a photographer and film-maker for more then thirty years, dedicating his activities to the study of different cultures from the southern hemisphere. Through his travels to less frequently explored places, at times reaching unknown populations, he rigorously documents their customs, culture and history. As a documentary-film maker, he has worked on, in collaboration with Rai and Mediaset, fifty or so cinematographic pieces with a social and anthropological backdrop. During the last eight years, in association with the Televisione Svizzera Italiana, he has made some important documentaries filmed in some of the world's most unknown regions.

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