'We are Zama Zama' is a documentary film about the lives of informal miners who scavenge for gold in the abandoned shafts of the world’s deepest gold mines. The product of years of collaboration between the producer-director, Rosalind Morris, and a community of migrants from across southern Africa, it combines immersive techniques, patient interviews and story-telling to create a textured portrait of the undocumented men and women who make their precarious living in the toxic wastelands of the gold industry. Morris and DP Ebrahim Hajee taught the miners to use cameras underground, and the unprecedented depiction of the days spent in the depths anchors a narrative that moves between the darkness below-ground and the dusted sun-bleached landscape above ground.

We follow the migrants as they make their dangerous journeys across the border at the Limpopo River, we attend their funerals and we join them in joyous meals to celebrate their survival, learn of their rich finds and terrible losses. Above all, the film lets audience members hear from the inhabitants of this world as they want to be heard.

This documentary contains some scenes of implied violence as well as verbal references to sexual violence that could be disturbing and/or distressing to younger and/or sensitive viewers.

This film is sponsored thanks to the generosity of CUPE BC.

Co-presenting Partner: JAYU