Colony

The multinational footwear company Bata, founded in Zlín, Czech Republic, in 1894, is one of the very first examples in industrial history of a company that internationalized its production. Inspired from the beginning by the Fordist production model and with branches spread across the world, Bata promoted the creation of actual villages where employees, known as Batamen, and their families could access all the necessary services for daily life: housing, shops, hospitals, schools, and recreational facilities. “Colony” focuses on the present-day reality of one such city, Batanagar in India, built near Calcutta. By the late 1930s, Batanagar already had more than 7,500 workers, but today it is a nearly deserted village. The economic crisis and the rise of Chinese competition, which provides cheaper labor, led to the closure of the Indian plant. The film intertwines the melancholic memories of those who lived through the city’s golden era with images of a now desolate and decaying urban landscape. “Colony” reveals the darkest side of globalization: in a world increasingly defined by economic dependencies, the promises of democratization and empowerment embedded in the rhetoric of these multinationals clash with the harsh reality of populations unable to shape the history of their own future.