Germinal

Based on the true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner's son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father's wishes, and eventually became a NASA scientist.

The picture tells of a mine disaster where German miners rescue French miners from an undergound fire and explosion. The story takes place in the Lorraine/Saar region, along the border between France and Germany.

Under the sun, the heavenly beauty of grasslands will soon be covered by the raging dust of mines. Facing the ashes and noises caused by heavy mining , the herdsmen have no choice but to leave as the meadow areas dwindle. In the moonlight, iron mines are brightly lit throughout the night. Workers who operate the drilling machines must stay awake. The fight is tortuous, against the machine and against themselves. Meanwhile, coal miners are busy filling trucks with coals. Wearing a coal-dust mask, they become ghostlike creatures. An endless line of trucks will transport all the coals and iron ores to the iron works. There traps another crowd of souls, being baked in hell. In the hospital, time hangs heavy on miners' hands. After decades of breathing coal dust, death is just around the corner. They are living the reality of purgatory, but there will be no paradise.

Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1876. A secret society of Irish coal miners, bond by a sacred oath, put pressure on the greedy and ruthless company they work for by sabotaging mining facilities in the hope of improving their working conditions and the lives of their families.

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.

Biopic of the famous French writer Emile Zola and his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA.

A man in his fifties reminisces about his childhood growing up in a Welsh mining village at the turn of the 20th century.

A slice of life of a group of young working class friends in a Northern French village coming to the end of their school years and embarking upon adult life. The film follows the choices and decisions made for their futures.

They loved each other with the ardor of thirteen-year-old boys. Rebellion and curiosity, hopes and doubts, girls and dreams of glory – they shared it all. Paul was rich, Emile poor. They went skinny-dipping, drank absinthe, starved, only to overeat. Sketched models by day, caressed them by night... Now, Paul is a painter and Emile a writer. Glory has passed Paul by. But Emile has it all: fame, money, the perfect wife, whom Paul once loved. They judge each other, admire each other, confront each other. They lose touch, meet up again, like a couple who cannot stop loving each other.

A Kentucky woman whose mine-worker husband is nearly killed in a cave-in, and whose father is slowly dying of black lung disease, joins the picket lines for a long, violent strike.

Jim Cole, heir to a mining operation, takes over the mine, which is suffering from unexplained low production, and is facing a strike by the miners. Jim will soon loose the mine if production doesn't increase and the sabotage continues. Mary Norsen, office-secretary, accidentally learns of a plot by Fred Johnson to wreck the mine and force Cole to sell his coal-mine. She and her brother, Joe, join Cole in his fight to stop Johnson.

In 1894, the French Army discovered the existence of a traitor Alsatian and Jewish, the French officer Alfred Dreyfus makes an ideal culprit. For lack of evidence, the War Ministry creates a damning document Dreyfus overwhelming. Judged and sentenced, Dreyfus is deported to Devil's Island. In 1896, the Army flushed out the real culprit. The truth broke out in 1898 thanks to the mobilization of intellectuals shaken by Zola's "J'accuse!"

A simple Pennsylvania coal miner is drawn into the violent conflict between union workers and management.

Elizabeth Thatcher, a young school teacher from a wealthy Eastern family, migrates from the big city to teach school in a small coal mining town in the west.

Follow the lives of ambitious miners as they head north in pursuit of gold. With new miners, new claims, new machines and new ways to pull gold out of the ground, the stakes are higher than ever. But will big risks lead to an even bigger pay out?

After taking his young son Roddy to a remote Northumberland village, Peter Greenbank meets a violent death, leaving the boy alone with no family to speak of. Roddy is adopted and raised by Kate Makepeace, a good friend of his father’s, and develops a close friendship with Hal and Mary Ellen. But their sibling bond is put to the test as they become adults. The hidden secrets of the past are painfully unearthed as their lives are intertwined by a tragic destiny.

Harlan County, Ky., has a history of violence and corruption associated with coal mining, but because that industry in Appalachia is a shell of its former self, law enforcement is dedicating its resources elsewhere. The county has been hit hard by a new kind of crime -- prescription drug dealing -- and it's up to Sheriff Marvin J. Lipfird to get it under control. In the reality-documentary series "Kentucky Justice," Lipfird and his team of deputies target everyone from street-corner dealers to city officials in a quest to clean up communities.

Kahina Zadi, 32, a French police officer travels to Kiruna in Sweden to investigate the bestial murder of a French citizen. Together with Anders, a Swedish prosecutor of Sami origin, she begins an investigation. Soon new killings start to happen and the first victim turns out to be the tip of a very dark iceberg. The victims seemingly have nothing in common more than that they are all being killed in a well-planned and vicious manner. In their hunt for the truth, both Kahina and Anders are forced to deal with their own past that they have repressed. A personal journey through a painful past becomes the key to succeed in preventing the violent killings that affects the small mining community of Kiruna.

My Brother Jonathan is a 1985 BBC five part mini-series that relates the story of an idealistic doctor, Jonathan Dakkers, in the coal country of England during the period around WW1 and a love triangle.

Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, 1832. Anne Lister attempts to revitalize her inherited home, Shibden Hall. Most notably for the time period, a part of her plan is to help the fate of her own family - by taking a wife.

The story of how one company triggered the worst drug epidemic in American history. Look into the epicenter of America's struggle with opioid addiction, from a distressed Virginia mining community, to the hallways of the DEA, and to the opulence of "one percenter" Big Pharma Manhattan.

Two murders shatter an already fractured community leading to one of the largest manhunts in British history while threatening to inflame historic divisions sparked during the Miners' Strike three decades before.

A dramatization of Émile Zola's greatest novel. Hired in the Montsou mines, Étienne Lantier meets the Maheu family and falls in love with their daughter Catherine. She is courted by Chaval, a brutal worker. When the Compagnie des Mines lowered wages, Étienne, already outraged by this misery, rose up. Dreaming of justice, he pushes for a strike. Weeks go by, the starving strikers struggle, but, victims of violent repression, resign themselves to returning to work

On the brink of returning to gold mining, Gold Rush founding father Todd Hoffman and crew reveal new insight on the eight years they struggled to strike it rich, own up to past mistakes and look forward to the future.

Trop la Classe, is the French version of As the Bell Rings. It is currently on the Disney Channel and every Sunday on one cable broadcast. It is a French adaption of the Disney Channel Italy Original Series Quelli dell'intervallo. The show's 5th season has begun airing on February 24, 2010.

Forty years after, through the eyes of those directly involved, this powerful series explores the bitterly divisive strike that wounded the soul of the nation