Grit: Surviving the World’s Largest Mud Disaster

When Dian was six years old, she heard a deep rumble and turned to see a tsunami of mud barrelling towards her village.

Her mother scooped her up to save her from the boiling mud. Her neighbours ran for their lives.

Sixteen villages, including Dian’s, were wiped away, forever buried under 60 feet (18 metres) of mud.

A decade later, 60,000 people have been displaced from what was once a thriving industrial and residential area in East Java. Dozens of factories, schools and mosques were completely submerged under a moonscape of ooze and grit.

The cause? Many believe Lapindo, an Indonesian company drilling for natural gas in 2006, unleashed a violent, unstoppable flow of hot sludge from the Earth’s depths.

It is estimated that the mudflow will not end for another decade.

This is the story of a community’s response to one of the biggest man-made environmental disasters in the world as they try to rebuild their lives.

Filmmakers: Cynthia Wade and Sasha Friedlander