“I think the Gringos started with the lithium down there”. Don Rosauro, a salt-miner on Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, stands in the midst of an endless white desert as he points to a black dot on the horizon. Generations of native Aymara Indians have mined the flats, the world’s largest salt lake, 3,670 metres above sea level. But beneath the salt lake’s rough white surface lies the planet’s largest deposit of lithium. Lithium has been hailed as the resource of the future. It is used to make mobile phones and laptop computers. Vast quantities of lithium are needed to produce the high-power batteries needed for the electric engines of future cars. Daniel Lopez and his family live in the village of Caquena, next to the salt lake, their way of life governed by local tradition. How has their microcosm changed since being touched by the interests of globalisation? The documentary looks at the lives of 14-year-old Daniel and his school-friend, and at the lives of their fathers, two generations who mine the salt lakes against a backdrop that is starting to show the first signs of change. This moment in time is a turning point, the calm before the storm that will begin to batter the village’s culture with the winds of globalisation. “What will lithium bring? How will it change life in Caquena?” asks the mayor’s wife as she raises her eyes towards the future.