Dominic Sangma, the director of "Rapture," is turning to the damage done by unregulated stone mining in his next feature, "Veil of Dust," Variety reported. The drama is part of the Asian Project Market, which takes place inside the Asian Contents & Film Market at the Busan International Film Festival. The film is still in development, and the team is using the market to raise money and look for co-production partners and backers who share Sangma's outlook.
A Story of Compensation and Silence
The story begins when a blast tears through the hills and 35-year-old Nengsal is pulled from the rubble without a leg. His wife, Ajin, who is 32, sets out to secure compensation and meets a system that depends on exploiting people and keeping them quiet. The village headman is compromised, a local NGO is chasing its own agenda, and the mine's operator reveals that Nengsal was never officially employed, which leaves workers like him unrecorded on their own land.
The couple's children, 12-year-old Kasanchi and 10-year-old Miklu, carry the film into a mystical register drawn from indigenous belief. A healer named Rengin guides Miklu through a ritual involving a bird, meant to "transfer" his father's wound. After an unplanned blast kills a boy from the village, the elders accept advance compensation to preserve calm. With Nengsal begging Ajin to end his suffering and her pursuit of justice stalled, she turns to rare herbs in her garden that can heal or harm.
Why Sangma Paused His Trilogy
Mining has appeared in Sangma's earlier work, but it moves to the center here. Variety reported that the urgency of the subject led him to set aside the last film of his village trilogy. Explosions, trembling ground, ruined homes and farms, and villagers killed in accidents are part of his childhood memories, and the quarrying continues. He says it was so ordinary for so long that he never felt compelled to address it, until a recent stay in the village showed him landslides, cracked houses and mining creeping toward the main settlement.
"To an outsider, unregulated mining might seem like a mere environmental issue. But to those of us who live in its shadow, it doesn't just erode the soil – it erodes the soul," Sangma told Variety.
He says the elders have largely stayed silent, possibly because they never viewed mining as harmful or because many of them have depended on it for a living. The deeper he looked, the more tangled it became, and he acknowledges that villagers share some responsibility for how long it has gone on. A father of a young daughter, he hopes speaking out will improve the place she calls home, and he describes the film as a small-scale picture of humanity's greed toward the earth.
Track Record and Next Steps
Producer Xu Jianshang, who worked on Sangma's debut "Ma'ama" and on "Rapture," told Variety that his local concerns resonate globally and that his imagery has beauty and grace, adding that more voices like his deserve backing.
"Rapture," the middle chapter of the trilogy, premiered in 2023 and took the cultural diversity award at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. "Ma'ama" earned a cinematography prize from the Shanghai International Film Festival and the top film award at the Jogja-Netpac Asian Film Festival.
For now, the next milestone is financing. The Busan market gives the project a platform to find the partners it needs before it can move beyond development.
Reporting sources: Variety, “Locarno Title ‘Rapture’ Director Dominic Sangma Confronts Unregulated Stone Mining in Busan Asian Project Market Drama ‘Veil of Dust’”.