COTTON100%

Uzbekistan's cotton industry has gained sad notoriety for the ecological havoc it has wrought, including the near complete disappearance of the Aral See. Alas, the labour conditions in the sector are also problematic. Filmmakers rarely manage to gain access to the cotton fields, but Mikhail Borodin does, while accompanying two women – human rights activist Elena and farmer Mukhabbat. The latter has leased land from the state and must deliver a certain amount of cotton every year, in spite of the water shortages that plague her region. Harvesting the cotton is particularly labour-intensive and it has become common practice to forcibly recruit workers from other state enterprises for the seasonal task. The harvest hands are housed in dilapidated dormitories or gymnasiums and often not even compensated at all for the back-breaking physical labour. In slow-moving images, Borodin paints a portrait of the two women, their everyday family lives and their forays to the cotton plantations. Out of myriad little insights, a kaleidoscopic picture of exploitation in a post-Soviet state caught between tradition and modernity emerges.