Jade Miners

A fascinating documentary shot in the mountainous north of Burma No filmmaker is welcome there because against the background of a civil war the jade miners enter the deserted mines illegally With the aid of filming locals however Midi Z was able to compile this portrait Getting rich quick turns out to be hard and risky work Jade has always been a valuable commodity in Asia In the mountains in the north of Burma there are valuable deposits of jade The area forms part of Kachin State inhabited by many ethnic groups which found themselves embroiled in the Civil War in 2010 with the Burmese government Jade mining was halted because of the conflict Thousands of workers however went to the war zone in order to dig for illegal jade It turned the region into a nogo area and the filmmaker Midi Z who had so far made feature films in Burma saw no opportunity to go and film there It was far too dangerous iffrcom