The Conscript

Directed by Arda Sarıgün

With Beyti Engin, Akın Ertürk, Ali Arda Akpınar, Hasan Tatoğlu and Sinan Çetinbakış

“The Conscript” traces the remnants of 176 years of coal mining in Zonguldak, home to Turkey’s first coal basin. From the laws of compulsory labour to the Great Miners’ March of 1991, from abandoned workers’ towns to miners still working underground today, the film follows the burden of labour carried from one generation to the next. Moving from the pit to the dinner table, from mining disasters to solidarity, it looks at the miners not only through their work and its dangers, but through their jokes, exhaustion, fears and dreams. The past continues to inhabit the city, its bodies and its collective memory. Despite all that has been lost, “The Conscript” searches for the enduring capacity to imagine another life.