Film review

Year: 2021

Director: Fiona Lloyd-Davies and Robert Flummerfelt

Language: English

Rating: Entertaining 3/5 | Informative 5/5 | Inspiring 3/5

With the recent events of COP26 and the Earthshot prize, the buzzword on everyone’s lips—finally— is climate solutions: strategies to protect our planet and future generations.

As climate-consciousness is growing, so is the world’s “insatiable appetite for cobalt”—a core raw material needed for electric car batteries. The Cost of Cobalt spotlights the mining communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that are supporting the world’s transition away from fossil-fuel vehicles. 

Fiona Lloyd-Davies and Robert Flummerfelt’s short (but by no means sweet) exposé introduces us to the families in Katanga, DRC, for whom cobalt is a poisoned chalice. In high quantities, cobalt is toxic to the human body, and in Katanga it is seeping into waterways and being consumed in drinking water. Lloyd-Davies and Flummerfelt highlight the growing body of evidence that cobalt mining may be responsible for a range of malformations in the babies born in these mining communities, from cleft palates to stillborns.

Over the course of the documentary, we meet the doctors treating babies affected, families of cobalt miners, and scientists studying this issue. Whilst moving, the film’s intimate focus on these lives is arguably frustrating since it fails to sufficiently engage with the broader issues of climate inequity and injustice that its subject matter throws up.

However, in laying its findings bare the film allows us to come to our own conclusions, perhaps resulting in a more powerful evocation. It is uncomfortable to realise that this celebrated climate solution is damaging the health of the next generation in the DRC, and the film serves as a striking illustration that inequities exist not only in the climate problem, but also in its solutions. What use is there in trying to protect our future generations, whilst hurting them in another corner of the world? The Cost of Cobalt is a painstaking reminder that climate solutions must be equitable to not create further harm. 

The Cost of Cobalt is being screened live alongside Green Warriors: Coal in the Lungs at the Global Health Film Festival on Saturday 4 December, followed by a panel discussion including co-director Fiona Lloyd-Davies. Global Health Film Festival is the annual flagship event of Global Health Film, a UK charity promoting the power of storytelling in global health. More information and tickets can be found on their website.