Ademloos

After the death of his father, Belgian filmmaker Daniel Lambo starts an investigation into the deadly asbestos industry. His search leads him to one of the biggest asbestos dumping grounds in India, where he uncovers an industry worth millions that continues to jeopardize the lives of employees and consumers around the world.

Filmmaker Daniel Lambo grew up in Kapelle-op-den-Bos, the Belgian town where his father was a union member and labourer working in the local Eternit factory. The company used to be one of the biggest asbestos-producing multinationals in the world. Since the end of the 1990s, the production of asbestos has been prohibited in the Netherlands and Belgium, but this harmful substance is still used extensively in other regions. This becomes apparent from a visit that Lambo pays to the village of Kymore in central India, where an Eternit subsidiary still produced asbestos on a large scale until 2002. The area is now one of the biggest asbestos dumping grounds in the world.

In Kymore, Daniel discovers an active asbestos factory that used to be owned by Eternit. It mirrors the past of Kapelle-op-den-Bos. In this Indian village, the pollution also casts its dark shadow on the community. Nirmala, a former teacher and a mother, decides to dedicate herself to defending the numerous victims. Together with the filmmaker, she fights for a global ban on asbestos, but pursuing that objective means fighting a powerful industry.