YOU CANNOT WIN WITHOUT FIGHTING

Germany/ Argentina 2008
Malena Filmproduktion in cooperation with WDR/ARTE

Documentary, HDV, 53 min
Shooting location: Salta, Argentinien

Summary:
This is a personal trip to General Mosconi, a small town in the north of Argentina, rich with oil and gas. 1993 the state owned enterprise, YPF, that gave work, health care and education to the whole region, was privatised. The unemployment rate climbed to 70 percent, the whole infrastructure system collapsed. 

Today, the majority of people living there cannot even afford a bottle of gas (gas is the cheapest energy source in Argentina). Water is only available six hours a day and then it’s mostly polluted. All public institutions are basically shut down and offer services only sporadically.

I went there to make a film-workshop on documentaries with members of the UTD, the union for unemployed workers in Mosconi. The press calls them „piqueteros“, they call themselves social workers. They have developed creative and unusual strategies of survival and ways of re-establishing the social network, that serve as a model for social movements throughout the country. They film themselves and I film them: their projects, their beliefs, their attitude towards life.