Germinal

Germinal is an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers'' strike in northern France in the 1860s. Étienne, young migrant worker, arrives at the forbidding coal mining town of Montsou in the bleak area of the far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior, Étienne befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds ...