
Burial Boys of Ebola
During the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, safe burial becomes as urgent as treatment, since a body remains highly infectious after death. This film follows a crew of young men hired to do that work: suiting up in full protective gear, entering homes where families have just lost someone, and carrying the dead to hastily dug graves. Director Ben C. Solomon's camera stays close as the crew sprays disinfectant, seals bodies in bags, and manages panicked or grieving relatives who sometimes resist letting strangers take their dead. The men talk about the stigma the job carries in their communities, the fear of infection they live with daily, and the wages that keep them doing it anyway. There is no narrator smoothing over the tension; the film lets the burials themselves, one after another, make the case for how much depends on this unglamorous labor. It is a short, direct look at the people the outbreak turned into essential workers almost overnight.