In the Mix - Movie

Finally available on DVD in the U.S., Hubert Sauper’s grim but utterly absorbing documentary about fishermen on Africa’s Lake Tanzania will almost certainly disturb your view of things. Darwin’s Nightmare provides an unblinking look at poverty, exploitation, environmental stress, disease and famine on the edges of the largest lake on the African continent, a huge body of fresh water with an abundant supply of Nile Perch. A desperate community of impoverished fishermen supplies the European market with fish from that lake. Planes fly in and out of the rundown airport, piloted mostly by Ukrainian crews. Mostly, they fly in empty, and fly out with tons of fish destined for markets throughout the EU. Sometimes, though, they bring weapons to feed the internecine warfare that provides employment and an illusory ray of hope to Africa’s unemployed young men. It will depress you, this film, but if you are curious about the world you live in, and if you want to expand your sense of what it means to be human, you dare not miss it.