Into My Lungs

Into My Lungs
Directed by Ayman Alazraq, Emanuel Svedin
Country Norway, Bangladesh
Year 2022
Languages Bengali
Subtitles English
Producer Fouzia Mahin Choudury

Into My Lungs is a documentary film that looks at working conditions within the textile industry in Bangladesh, where cotton mills supply cheap labour to many of the West’s largest fast fashion corporations. With no alternative means of survival, many of the workers – who begin their working life as teenagers – have to accept subsistence wages and the threat of the debilitating chronic lung disease byssinosis.

Initiated by the artists Ayman Alazraq and Emanuel Svedin, the Into My Lungs project was transformed by the intervention of the pandemic and the addition of the Dhaka-based producer Fouzia Choudury to the collaboration. Alazraq and Svedin were able to turn their enforced distance from the production into an advantage, as Choudury and the local film crew were able to gain unprecedented access to factories and hospitals, as well as intimate insights into all aspects of the situation.

The production of Into My Lungs has been funded by Kulturrådet and Oslo kommune.