11 Underground

In 1984, the hard-fought protest of 11 Spanish mercury miners made the national news as they barricaded themselves hundreds of meters below ground in a mining shaft for 11 days and 11 nights in protest of poor working conditions and pay. 35 years on, the mine is closed for good; the world in Almadén has changed, but the problems kept growing. Using reenactment and ethnofiction, a local community tries to rise the spirit of the miners’ strike once more and help bring hope and social justice to their town.

  • Chico Pereira
    Director
    Donkeyote (2017), Pablo's Winter (2012), My Love (Netflix, 2021),
  • Chico Pereira
    Writer
    Donkeyote (2017), Pablo's Winter (2012), My Love (Netflix, 2021),
  • Kaarle Aho
    Producer
  • Milana Christitch
    Producer
  • Clara Santaolaya
    Producer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    11 Bajo Tierra
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Feature
  • Genres:
    Activistm, Political, Etnographic Film, Docufiction, Ethnofiction, Rural, Labor, Human Rights
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 26 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    December 9, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    300,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Finland, France, Spain
  • Country of Filming:
    Spain
  • Language:
    Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • DOCPOINT Helsinki Documentary Film Festival
    Helsinki
    Finland
    February 5, 2025
    National Premiere
    Best Feature Documentary (National Competition)
Director Biography - Chico Pereira

Chico Pereira is a Spanish filmmaker and researcher working as an Assistant Professor in Documentary Film at Aalto University, Finland. Chico's debut feature-length documentary, Pablo’s Winter (2012), won awards at DOK-Leipzig, IDFA, and Full Frame, and it opened the 2013 MoMA Documentary Fortnight in NYC. Donkeyote (2017) premiered at 2017 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and won several awards including Best Feature Documentary Film at 2017 Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the 2017 International Documentary Association (IDA) Creative Recognition for Best Writing. His latest feature documentary, 11 Underground, (2024) mixes documentary reenactment, ethnofiction and art as social practice in a former mining town. Pereira holds a practice-based PhD in Film and Digital Media with a Designated Emphasis on Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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