Through the eyes of a 12-year-old Juvi, we experience life of some inhabitants of the oldest mine in Bolivia, whose deaths weigh as much as the mined silver, confronting the limits of human endurance, and the remanence of history's bloodstains. A visual statement on the foundations of modern wealth.
Documentary filmmaker. Born in the Beskid Mountains, she has lived and worked in Chile, Bolivia, and France. A graduate of the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School. She made her debut with the film THE DAM, which won awards at festivals including FIPADOC, Go Short, and New Horizons. She is a three-time winner of the Jantar Award at the Young and Film Festival. Her last feature-length documentary, SILVER (2025), won six awards at the Krakow Film Festival and a recommendation for a European Film Award nomination.
Cast
Juvenal Castro
Awards
Jury Prize
Ed. 2026
Più che cercare di spiegare il mondo dentro le miniere, Silver è un film che ci fa vivere l'atmosfera e il silenzio che si vive al loro interno, e le strutture dello sfruttamento che le caratterizzano. Sfruttamento di donne e uomini e, al contempo, sfruttamento delle montagne, che progressivamente scompaiono, sventrate dall'estrazione mineraria con una violenza che ne profana la sacralità, magistralmente trasmessa dal film.
Universities of Trento, Bolzano and Innsbruck Students’ Award
Ed. 2026
The jury assigns this award for the film’s high technical quality, highlighted by the precision of the framing both in confined spaces and within the open quarries, alongside sound editing of rare effectiveness; for its ability to interpret the festival’s theme in an original way, transforming the silver mine into an unprecedented mountain landscape with its own cultural ecosystem; for the film’s political commitment, aimed at rigorously recreating the life and historical legacy of the Potosí mines, defined by colonial reasoning and brutal working conditions.
