On Tuesday, the 1st of October we showed the documentary 'Rosia Montana - Town on the brink' by director Fabian Daub.
The screening was followed by a panel discussion with Oana Mondonc (WWF), Serban Cantacuzino (Founder and President of ProPatrimonio), Radu Tatucu (GRASP Romania) and Dumitru Dobrev.
After 14 years of determined resistance to the largest cyanide mining project in Europe, Romanians have been sabotaged by their own political leaders. The Government of Romania has recently put forward a proposed bill to be voted in parliament, which would allow the controversial Ro?ia Montan? mining project to commence. As a horrified reaction to this, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Romania and around the world, in what is characterised as the largest youth-led protest movement since the 1989 revolution.
RO?IA MONTANA has been thrown into a state of disarray ever since the arrival of a Romanian gold mining corporation with powerful Canadian shareholders. The corporation is planning on razing a large portion of the town and its surroundings to the ground in order to gain access to the underlying rock, which happens to hold the largest gold deposits in Europe. The mining process will involve the use of highly toxic cyanide to extract the gold from the rock, justified by the company as a necessary risk to spur economic development in the area, but potentially fatal to the local environment and the beautiful surrounding landscape.
A long-standing fight has torn apart the village community, where the division between opponents and supporters of the mining project even splits families down the middle.
Rosia Montana - Town on the brink has been well received at international film festivals, winning the Special award for Best Romanian Documentary at Astra Film Festival, Sibiu and the Jury award for Best Long Documentary at Al Jazeera Film Festival.
The event includes a photo exhibition, featuring works by Sebastian Florian, Adrian Petrisor, Tiberiu Mihail Cimpoeru, Viorel Popescu, Cristian Vasile and Catalin Emil Burlacu.
Photos credits: James Rice
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