Blood in the Mobile

Frank Piasechi Poulsen has made a documentary where he wants to show how questionable mobile phone production is. With his infatuation of making this documentary, he has put the lives of innocent people, even children at risk. Was this really necessary? It's clear that the people interviewed in the documentary were not aware or educated on the risks taken which makes this documentary disgusting and unprofessional.

Still civil wars going on Congo for companies and us consumers profit from the blood metals.

First doc i see that shows the work on underground mines in Africa.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

After a UN report was published linking minerals used in mobile phones to financing of a bloody, brutal fifteen year war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Frank Piasechi Poulsen was unable to sleep with knowing this may be true of his beloved Nokia phone and so set on a mission taking him to conferences held in his native Denmark, to the mines in Walikalie where various militia groups control day to day life and boys as young as fourteen are sent down in risky conditions in the mines to risk their lives for a pittance, to a campaign group in the United States, all the way to Nokia's head office in Finland to get to the bottom of whether it is aware of unethical practises and whether it's 'socially responsible' image is really a sham.

It's a scary but eerily true (and something we're all too aware of, if we're honest) fact that most of the material goods we're accustomed to and even depend upon in this day and age have almost certainly been manufactured and appropriated off the back of the exploitation of people in the poorest corners of the world, from mobile phones to the laptop I'm writing this review on now, and guiltily most of us turn a blind eye to this, desiring as we do the latest gadgets and gizmos. But Frank Piasechi Poulsen would appear to be so troubled at the thought of his phone being a 'blood mobile', he took a round the world trip in search of the answer. And what he's ended up with is this well intentioned but amateurish and basic, straight out documentary.

From the off set, it seems less of an investigation into 'whether there is a link between the sale of mobile phones and the war in Congo' and more of a straight out statement, which Poulsen seems to just repeatedly go over and over, taking his time to really start digging into whether this is true, where it goes on and delivering facts and figures relevant to his project. It does serve as an eye opener to what really goes on, as we see the workers going down into the mines in terrible, unsafe conditions and hear tales of guerrilla soldiers committing atrocities against people, but Poulsen seems convinced from the out set that 'yes, the biggest mobile phone company in the world is guilty' and this ends up feeling like propaganda for this assertion.

This is obviously a fairly cheap, low budget effort that Poulsen put his neck on the line to make and wanted the world to wake up and see. If only it had delved a little deeper into what goes on and not just hammered the basic, simplistic 'the minerals in the phones are financing the war in Congo' message, which just leaves it with a cheap, amateurish feel. **

I watched this last night with my wife and we were captivated from start to finish. i had never heard of Frank Poulsen but after watching this did some research and he is obviously not new to the journalist world and documentaries.I had no idea that this mining and the corruption behind it was going on, and had he not used the tactics of the fact he was just wanting to make a film about how they were sending these people underground and getting these minerals, then i doubt if he would have gotten out of there alive. it seemed obvious that the fact he was making a movie seemed to excite some of those in charge with some even posing for the camera. If it had leaked out that he was in fact making an anti mining film, things would have been much worse. The facts found in this documentary, although disturbing is not going to see us all throwing away our beloved mobiles, and computers, but perhaps will make some think (as i do) why not give them aid and proper mining equipment to do the job safely.? They could still earn a good -if not better income using machines which would need operators and safer roads in and out would also generate work. The only problem is the dark side of the story where we have other forces taxing the miners of their minerals to buy arms for the bloody war that evolves around the whole process. Definitely worth viewing.