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It represented an unforgivable calamity and bore unmistakable parallels to the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina: in February 2006, a group of 63 miners became trapped beneath an avalanche at Mexico's Pasta de Conchos coal mine. The Mexican government of President Vicente Fox responded not with an immediate, heroic rescue (as one might well expect) but with seemingly limitless delays, cover-ups and deception - much of it attributable to the fact that the mine should have been closed down months prior because of flagrant safety violations. Rudy Joffroy's documentary The Fallen chronicles these tumultuous events, beginning with the accident itself and then moving into shocking revelations of the Fox government's malfeasance, ineptitude and glaring myopia, not to mention its heightened willingness to appease opportunistic and greedy mining operations at the expense of humane treatment of workers.