Running Time: 49 mins
Year: 2005

synopsis

On December 2, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India leaked poisonous methyl isocyanate gas that killed fifteen thousand people. Hundreds of thousands more were permanently maimed. Bhopal remains the world’s worst chemical industry disaster.

Twenty years later, survivors and their families are being re-victimized by the deliberate thwarting of scientific and medical studies concerning the disaster. To this day, they have been denied definitive information about the precise composition of the leaked gas and its long-term effects.

Beautiful Bhopal, once known as the “City of Mosques” is a sad, disgraceful testament to the absence of environmental and human justice. Exploring charges of corruption, Bhopal: The Search for Justice follows Raajkumar Keswani, the local journalist whose prediction of disaster proved prophetic. Set against a rich visual tapestry, Keswani travels through the Indian bastiis where the poorest victims live, and to the offices of frustrated doctors and scientists. Finally he makes his first trip to North America in search of answers.

At stake is more than fair compensation and long-term rehabilitation for the afflicted – “Bhopal” has become a rallying cry for post 9/11 concerns about chemical industry security and industrial pollution.

Credits

A film by Lindalee Tracey & Peter Raymont

Produced by White Pine Pictures
in co-production with The National Film Board of Canada
in association with The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in collaboration with Société Radio-Canada,
with the participation of The Canadian Television Fund, The Canadian Film or Video Tax Credit

“CERTAINLY ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENTARIES OF THE TV SEASON, BHOPAL: THE SEARCH FOR JUSTICE IS ALSO ONE OF THE SCARIEST. THE HOUR CARRIES WITH IT A CERTAIN AUSTERE BEAUTY. IT’S A HAUNTING STORY, ONE THAT HAS YET TO REACH AN ENDING”

—The Toronto Star