The world’s largest lithium deposit is located in the Bolivian Andes. The Europeans want the raw material to save their automotive industry, the Bolivians want to use it to overcome poverty, and companies from all over the world are exploring their options. Lithium has triggered a new gold rush, for it is essential for the energy transition. Without this metal, no electricity storage facility, no data centre, no electric car, no smartphone would work.
On the European side, entrepreneurs and EU diplomats are leading the negotiations with the Bolivian government. In rural areas, civil society groups are mobilising, organised mainly by women. With its multi-perspective narrative and mostly observational style, the film offers a rare insight into the European’s strategy to secure the sought after material and carves out the different interests and view points of a farmer, a llama herder, a mine guard, a lawyer, a miner, and a political activist towards extractivism and industrialisation in Bolivia. The history of colonial oppression, which is given voice through the 16th-century chronicle of the indigenous eyewitness Guamán Poma de Ayala, puts the present into perspective and provokes the question: Are we ready for decolonisation?