Arica
In Lars Edman and William Johansson’s compelling and dramatic documentary, local Chilean residents take on a Swedish mining company.
We have here a gripping tale which while familiar in its outlines has sufficient individuality for it to make a strong impression. Over the years there have, alas, been all too many instances of big companies, not least multinational corporations, acting in ways detrimental to health but often getting away with it due to their clout and influence. This is not the first time that such a case has been the basis of a documentary film and, indeed, there have also been memorable examples of such real-life events being portrayed on the screen in dramatised form (both 1999’s The Insider and 2000’s Erin Brockovich were outstanding examples of that and as recently as 2019 Todd Haynes brought us Dark Waters).
Arica is a film born of proximity. It deals with the scandal of untreated toxic waste causing illness and death in a valley in Chile having been deposited there in the 1980s by the Swedish mining company Boliden. Lars Edman, who co-wrote and co-directed this film with his fellow Swede William Johansson Kelén, grew up close to the company’s smelter plant at Rönnskär but had been born in Chile. These connections led him to become deeply involved with the situation and, in partnership with Kalén, he set out to study the lives of those in Arica whose homes were built as properties for low income families close beside the land where the waste had been dumped. A community leader, Rodrigo Pino Vargas, had taken up the issue but had been unable to obtain any payment of damages from Boliden. The response by the company had been that there was no adequate proof of arsenic trioxide from the waste being responsible and that, if it had been, then any liability was not theirs but that of the local firm, Promel, for processing it inadequately.
Arica is in fact a sequel to an earlier documentary, Toxic Playground, made by the same filmmakers in 2009 and that film contributed to the matter being taken much further. That earlier work was not released here but is quoted in this follow-up which stands firmly on its own feet. If the first half-hour largely reprises what had gone before, the rest of Arica is concerned first with lawyers building a case and then with what happened when, at long last and on behalf of 796 residents, the trial was held in 2017 in Sweden. Various lawyers and experts feature alongside other witnesses while footage shot in Chile introduces us to some of the victims including children who have lost mothers and mothers who have lost children.
Edman and Kalén lay out the material with skill - it's clear and it's moving and, unless the viewer knows the outcome already, there is considerable suspense as to how things will go (the film follows through up to 2021). Part of the drama stems from doubts as to what attitude will be taken by a former environmental director of Boliden, Rolf Svedberg, who had been sympathetic when Erdman had first become involved: on being required to go public as a witness he might change his tone. But even more forceful is the impact that stems from the legal arguments and the determination of Boliden’s representatives to explore every possible opening, every technicality available, to deny liability. Arica is a vivid illustration of the extent to which what happens in a court can so easily have very little to do with justice. Nevertheless, regardless of the odds against success, this is a film that emphasises the words spoken in it by Johan Ebbesson, a professor who is an expert on environmental law. As he puts it: “Every case of this kind is an inspiration for others, to learn from and to act on”.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Lars Edman, Jonas Ebbesson, Rodrigo Pino Vargas, Rolf Svedberg, Johan Öberg, Lewis Gordon, Robin Oldenstam, Jocelyn Tudezca, Klag Nilsson, Cecilia Darrell, Blas Martino, Joyce Tsuji, Walter Shields.
Dir Lars Edman and William Johansson, Pro William Johansson and Andreas Rocksén, Screenplay Lars Edman and William Johansson, Ph William Johansson, Ed Goran Tester and William Johannson, Animation Johan Lindström, Music Per-Henrik Mäenpää.
Laika Film & Telelvision/Aricadoc/Clin d’Oeil Films/Radio Films Ltd/Relation04 Media-Tull Stories.
95 mins. Sweden/Chile/Belgium/Norway/UK. 2020. UK Rel: 6 May 2022. Cert. PG.
