As a child growing up in Uzbekistan, film-maker Michael Borodin spent weeks at a time in the fields picking cotton when he should have been in class. The country is the world’s sixth-largest cotton producer; two million Uzbeks are involved in the production of “white gold”. Until recently, the state still had a monopoly on the industry and every year, doctors, teachers and other government workers – as well as schoolkids – were frogmarched to the fields at harvest time.
Last year, a UN agency reported that forced labour for cotton picking had been finally abolished in Uzbekistan. This documentary, filmed before that report was published, follows two women involved in the industry. To be honest, the film is a tough sell to anyone outside Uzbekistan, with not much in the in the way of detail or context to explain what’s happening on screen.
Still, its subjects are fascinating. Human-rights activist Yelena is in her 60s, a blazing force of nature marching about the countryside handing out flyers and gathering evidence of poor conditions. She finds a group of press-ganged miners housed temporarily in a college: “Do the bosses sleep on the concrete floor?” she sarcastically asks a security guard.
Muhabata, meanwhile, is a cotton farmer wringing her hands at the prospect of filling a quota set by local government. An official knocks at her door and demands that she starts harvesting. Muhabata protests that her crops aren’t ripe yet. The same thing happened last year; they ordered her to start picking then refused to pay up for damp, under-ripe cotton.
The documentary doesn’t do much to explain the ins and outs of the system women are railing against – but maybe you don’t actually need much context to feel these women’s indignant fury boiling over at the unfairness of it all.
• Cotton100% is available on 12 May on True Story.
