As tech giants across the world race to produce the fastest and most accurate generative AI models, there is a dire cost to many of our planet’s natural resources. Hardware engineers of graphics processing units (GPUs) require materials that conduct electricity most efficiently, and silver so happens to be the most conductive. To achieve lightning-fast processing, generative AI models require countless data centers filled with upwards of 100,000 GPUs, resulting in a dangerously high demand for silver used in their manufacture. Natalia Koniarz’s breath-taking documentary Silver (premiering at Slamdance 2026) uncovers the painful reality of extracting this metal.
The feature centers on the oldest mine in Bolivia, Cerro Rico. Notorious for its once seemingly endless deposits of silver, Koniarz takes us on a devastating journey that navigates the consequences of silver mining for those who work tirelessly in the depths of Cerro Rico, the families who live nearby, and the mine itself. More often than not, the focus is on Juvi, a 12-year-old child who lives beside the mines.
Stanisław Cuske’s cinematography is utterly mesmerizing, the real driving force behind this feature’s impact. After previously working as a camera operator on The Zone of Interest (2023), Cuske readopts the shooting philosophy in Silver that the imagery he captures “should be observing, not imposing.”
Where he excels is in using the darkness of the environment to his advantage, creating striking inverted silhouettes that reinforce the trapped feeling of the miners on a day-to-day basis.
While the mine itself radiates a stillness that Cuske illustrates perfectly, he creates dynamism by adding shots of travelling in the mine carts. He does an excellent job transporting audiences into the claustrophobic caverns and accurately depicting the scale of the almost 5,000-meter-high mountain that inhabits the mine, balancing the juxtaposition of beauty and horror that Cerro Rico offers.
You cannot ignore the risks that the camera crew puts themselves under whilst filming within the mines. From the incredibly enclosed spaces they needed to maneuver camera equipment through to the mine’s instability, which could cause unpredictable structural collapses, the team faced the peril of the journalists, putting themselves in harm’s way to tell the story they believe in.
Silver strays away from documentarian tropes, avoiding traditional sit-down interviews with subjects and prolonged narration over corresponding imagery. Instead, Koniarz treats the film as a fictional narrative feature. You will often catch yourself questioning whether this is really a documentary, as we are allowed to sit in on real conversations and activities with the Bolivian locals in a way that does not feel overbearing or staged.
Whether it be sitting in on school lessons that discuss the dangers of the mine to young children, seeing silver being carefully excavated, or watching workers rig explosives within the mine, Koniarz breaks the boundaries of what a documentary can be by effectively invoking potent emotions that we would not often associate with this genre.
Cuske and Koniarz’s visualization of mining challenges consumers of technology to shift their mindsets towards the manufacturing ecosystem, versus the thoughtless reliance on this hardware. The computers we type on, the phones in our pockets, and the television screens in our homes would all in some way use silver because of the rise in generative AI adoption. Yet this mistreatment is ever-present, more often than not in underdeveloped countries like Bolivia. This is filmmaking at its most powerful.
Cerro Rico is as much of a subject in the doc as those who live around it. The sound design team personifies the mountain. Herbet Gonzalo, Quintana Armayo, Osmar Quiroz, and Marcin Lenarczyk work together to fill the silence that typically voice-overs would with reverberating, melancholic sounds from the deep chasms in the mountain, capturing its vastness, hollowness, and pain.
In a world where there is a blatant disregard for the impact of our actions on our planet, Silver humanizes the violent pursuit of this metal. We put a face to an otherwise unrecognized struggle, realizing just how many lives have been lost for such a small piece of metal. You are left wanting to understand more about the flippant, mass-produced use of silver and the exploitation of the Bolivian people
Silver sends an important message to heavily industrialized nations like the United States and the United Kingdom. We need to pause, take a step back, and reflect on the privilege of living in developed countries. Modern technology relies heavily on resources like silver, and since it is not abundant, Koniarz asks us to consider our consumption and the wastefulness of using a generative AI tool or buying a new phone, recognizing how harmful this can be to the people involved in mining.
Review Courtesy of Nandita Joshi
Feature Image Courtesy of Telemark SP. z o.o., Piraya Film AS & IV Films Oy