Documentary Screening: Collective Threads, Collective Rights

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Set on the island of Sri Lanka, shaped by Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule, Collective Threads, Collective Rights offers a rare, worker-led perspective beyond the familiar language of “audits” and “sustainability".

Through their everyday realities and aspirations, workers themselves define what “Decent Work” (SDG-8) means on the ground.

You will:

• 👂 Hear from Mani, Priya, Surya and Pushpa as they navigate life between rural villages and factory zones
• 🌱 Discover how civil-society networks and trade unions foster transnational solidarity in a country marked by genocide and economic and political collapse

Building on these accounts, the film also shows how Sri Lanka’s colonial history still shapes global supply chains and how today’s due-diligence debates often turn the Global South into a tick-box exercise.

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• Karthika Nadarajah - PhD researcher at Radboud University
• Keerthana Kuperan - Public-sector auditor and researcher specialising in global supply chain accountability

As researchers from the second-generation Tamil Sri Lankan diaspora (one Dutch-born and one Germany-born), we wanted to show how garment and tea-estate workers in Sri Lanka define dignity and survival on their own terms. Grounded in a year of visual-anthropological fieldwork, Collective Threads, Collective Rights mixes heavy themes with moments of humour and resilience, bringing workers’ voices to European audiences in an authentic way.

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After Berlin, Utrecht, Zurich, London and Cologne, the film now comes to Nijmegen. We warmly invite researchers, activists and practitioners are invited to join the conversation.

For questions about the event, please e-mail a2FydGhpa2EgfCBjb21kdSAhIGl0.

See you there,

Karthika & Keerthana

Trailer

Info: Followed by a discussion situating frontline worker experiences within broader Dutch- and German debates on migration, racism and global consumer responsibility in the Netherlands (also in the post-election contest)

Also check out other Entertainment events in Nijmegen, Contests in Nijmegen.