Danger, toil, and superstition pervade life in a mining town high up in the Bolivian mountains. Tin is the heartbeat of the community providing jobs and livelihoods - but at considerable cost. With deaths commonplace, people make offerings to El Tio, the devil under the earth, for protection and good fortune. But when the mountain's flow of tin ebbs, further measures must be taken...

2025

2024

His buildings are garish, colorful and completely overloaded. Columns and glittering chandeliers everywhere, and way too much of everything. The Bolivian civil engineer and architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre (*1971) builds houses in El Alto for a nouveau riche upper class of the Aymara, the largest indigenous ethnic group in Bolivia.
2022

A Bolivian by birth, who grew up with adoptive parents in the Swabian town of Mössingen, is looking for his family in the mountains of Potosí. Out of poverty, his mother gave the little boy away when he was just a few months old. The search carries a story that goes far beyond personal fate. Because Manuel was born in a region known for the ruthless exploitation of silver. It's a film about identity, homeland and equal opportunities.
2022

In 1879, Bolivia lost its access to the sea in a war. When I was a child I did not understand how we had lost it; he thought the Chileans had taken him away in buckets. It is a diary towards interior landscapes, myths, characters and contradictions in a country that relives this loss every day.
2020

2020

Images of Argentinian companies and factories in the first light of day, seen from the inside of a car, while the director reads out documents in voiceover that reveals the collusion of the same concerns in the military dictatorship’s terror.
2020
Are tourists destroying the planet-or saving it? How do travelers change the remote places they visit, and how are they changed? From the Bolivian jungle to the party beaches of Thailand, and from the deserts of Timbuktu, Mali to the breathtaking beauty of Bhutan, GRINGO TRAILS traces stories over 30 years to show the dramatic long-term impact of tourism on cultures, economies, and the environment.
2014

2006: Evo Morales, first indigenous President is elected in Bolivia after the 2003 dramatic events following the fall of the President Sanchez de Lozada (exiled in the U.S. since then). The socialist revolution enters in its crucial stage. But dealing with power carries a burden of temptations and pathologies. In four years of shooting between Bolivia and the US this film focus on the difficult path of this unique historical opportunity. The film ends with the recent TIPNIS dramatic indigenous protest which creates an historical circle.
2013
A day in the life of Esperanza, a Quechua girl who lives in the remote mountains of southwestern Bolivia.
2012
Documents the conflicts and tensions that arise between highland migrants and Mosetenes, members of an indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon. It focuses particularly on a system of debt peonage known locally as ‘habilito’. This system is used throughout the Bolivian lowlands, and much of the rest of the Amazon basin, to secure labor in remote areas.
2010

In 1946, a group of Latvian Brazilian Baptist missionaries arrived to Rincon del Tigre (“Jaguar’s Corner”), in the backwoods of Bolivia, to preach God’s word to the Ayoreo Indians. After sixty years of selfless work in a largely hostile environment, something seems to have gone terribly wrong. Habituated to living under the protective wings of the mission, the Ayoreos seem neither to be willing to support themselves and start living on their own, nor able to return to their traditional way of life in the jungle. Dressed in second-hand clothes, they are stranded in the backwoods of Western-style civilization, with no particular way to go.
2010

2009

This is the history of a young farmer of the Bolivian plateau that becomes the first indigenous president of Bolivia. His childhood consists of shepherding ewes in the small school located in Orinoca where he befriends Reneco and Jamie, as well as his first love Wilma. All of them partake in different stages of each others lives. At the young age of 17 he is transferred to Oruro mining city in the heat of the Bolivian plateau. In order to survive he will have to work as a brick maker, baker, and trompetista in the Imperial band. The poverty and continuous droughts in the Moral field force the family Ayma to migrate towards the cochabambino tropic. In the tropical Chapare, Evo will become the biggest coca grower, soon to be delegated and win in the elections for president in 2005 with 54% votes. Evo Pueblo depicts the reality of our country, accounting for the common man that inhabits Bolivia through his fights, joys, poverty, exclusion and marginamiento.
2007

'The Devil's Miner' tells the story of 14-year-old Basilio who worships the devil for protection while working in a Bolivian silver mine to support his family.
2005

A documentary on American political campaign marketing tactics and their consequences.
2005

1992

Directed by Bolivian-born filmmaker Humberto Ríos (working from Argentina, where he was based), this 65-minute color documentary chronicles the struggle of Bolivian miners and peasants in the period leading up to the de facto government of dictator Hugo Banzer, who came to power with U.S. backing. The film offers a critical warning about the rise of dictatorships across Latin America, situating Bolivia's social conflict within the broader wave of imperialism and military repression sweeping the region at the time.
1972

The story of a poor girl who leaves her starving family and sheep for a more prosperous village. Her grandfather finds her and tries to convince her to return to her home.
1953
