Silver

PL/FI/NO 2025, 78 mins, Original ver­si­on with German and English sub­tit­les Director: Natalia Koniarz / Cinematography: Stanisław Cuske / Editor: Yael Bitton / Music: Yngve Leidulv Sætre, Marcin Lenarczyk

Over the cour­se of five cen­tu­ries, vast quan­ti­ties of sil­ver have been extra­c­ted from Cerro Rico. It has brought gre­at wealth to the Bolivian city of Potosí at its foot, but also count­less casu­al­ties. Today, the hol­lo­wed-out moun­tain resem­bles a Swiss cheese, with only a handful of dare­de­vils – or despe­ra­te souls – ven­tu­ring into the crumbling tun­nels. They have neither modern tech­no­lo­gy nor insu­rance cover, nor a health­ca­re sys­tem. The poli­ce have with­drawn; the area is dan­ge­rous and rife with crime, and the water is con­ta­mi­na­ted. Many of the miners are underage; hard­ly anyo­ne lives to see their 40th bir­th­day.
In her dis­ar­ming and remar­kab­ly matu­re stu­dy of this milieu – remar­kab­le for a debut – Natalia Koniarz plun­ges us right into the heart of this hosti­le envi­ron­ment, which reflects much of what is going wrong in the glo­bal eco­no­my. She takes us into claus­tro­pho­bic shafts whe­re dyna­mi­te is con­stant­ly explo­ding, into makes­hift huts wit­hout elec­tri­ci­ty, into brot­hels and onto spoil heaps that beco­me play­grounds. The focus is on child­ren who were born into the­se con­di­ti­ons and who, from the moment of their birth, had vir­tual­ly no future. We stumb­le through the men­acing sce­n­ery wit­hout any sen­se of chro­no­lo­gy or spa­ti­al ori­en­ta­ti­on, sens­ing that we, too, bear some of the bla­me. [Rainer Mende]

10 September / 8.00 pm / fsk Kino / Special guest: Natalia Koniarz
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