
People and Power: The Toxic Truth
In 1994, Italian journalist Ilaria Alpi and cameraman Miran Hrovatin were shot dead in Mogadishu while chasing a story about ships carrying toxic waste from Italy to Somalia. This film follows the investigation their killing interrupted, using footage shot in Somalia and Italy alongside interviews with journalists, activists, and researchers who have spent years trying to finish what Alpi started. It traces the alleged pipeline running from Italian businessmen and organized crime through shipping contracts into Somali ports, and asks who benefited from a civil war chaotic enough to hide illegal dumping from view. Somali communities describe unexplained illnesses and contaminated coastline that they connect directly to the buried and sunken drums. Officials and corporate figures named in Alpi's notes are confronted or shown declining to answer. The film treats her murder not as a closed case but as the clearest evidence that she was getting close to something, and it leaves the paper trail she left behind as the strongest argument that the dumping happened and someone wanted it kept quiet.