Koorehpazkhaneh

Mohammad Reza Mogaddasian films the monotonous trudging and plodding in a stone quarry in Teheran, which employs mainly children. The employers prefer children for this seasonal labour because they do not make such high demands with respect to their working conditions. Not surprisingly, working conditions in the brick-making industry are far from good. Every day, eleven-year olds who barely weigh 35 kilos themselves have to lug some 16,000 kilos of brick clay, covering 18 kilometres in temperatures of around forty degrees Celsius. Mogaddasian talks with these 21st-century ‘Oliver Twists’. He asks them for how long they have been working in the brick-making industry, what they earn, what they are fed, what their days are like and how much their bodies suffer under the immense pressure.