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Frame from SHIPBREAKERS | Would you risk your life dismantling the world’s largest ships just to survive? | NFB Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

SHIPBREAKERS | Would you risk your life dismantling the world’s largest ships just to survive? | NFB

NFB
Documentaries
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this documentary3 months2022–2024 score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN recommends it for an up-close look at the shipbreaking industry.

An NFB documentary about the shipbreaking yards of Alang, India, where about 40,000 people dismantle huge ships by hand in dangerous conditions.

“Both mortifying and fascinating to see this industry up close.” (HN, 2024)

3 recommendations · 1 citations · Documentaries

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@Paddywack Jul 2022 Recommends
on HN thread Two containers with same number detected in Chittagong port
Read more
I worked in Bangladesh for 3 years, and it is such a land of contrasts. The main electricity supply company at the time was running manual billings from a big room filled with manual general ledgers, one “T” account per household. It is a humbling, impoverished country with its main riches being its resilient, kind, resourceful people. Down the road/bay from Chittagong are the shipwrecking yards - a big time investment but worth watching is this… [this video] <edit> the film I am looking for is Iron Eaters, a very human view of the horrific shipyards. The above film is from India, but still worth looking at.
Documentary on dangerous shipbreaking work in the yards of South Asia
@h0l0cube May 2024 Recommends
on HN thread Shipbreaking
Someone posted this hour long documentary on shipbreaking in the comments a while back. Both mortifying and fascinating to see this industry up close. [this video]
Hour-long documentary giving a close look at the shipbreaking industry
@jitl Sep 2024 Recommends
on HN thread Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money
The cutting apart of ships at their end of life in salvage shipbreaker junkyards is fascinating, terrifying, and sad in equal parts. This (and similar) documentaries of the salvage beaches in India show a lot of interior cutting: [this video] It’s a stark juxtaposition from these shots of clean, carefully planned and engineered operations in high-tech ports. Shipbreaking is often done freehand, based on experience and intuition, without much in the way of reference documents or safety gear.
Shows interior cutting of ships at salvage beaches in India

Citations, criticism and jokes

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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