About the Film

The future of energy will require vast amounts of lithium, and nowhere in the world holds more “white gold” than the Andes. In Chile and Bolivia, at the heart of South America’s Lithium Triangle, some of the world’s most important reserves and ambitions converge. Once again, Latin America holds the raw resources the world craves. Is this a path to development — or the latest chapter of the resource curse? Across the salt flats of Bolivia and the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, the lithium boom is reshaping fragile ecosystems and strategic regions alike. As demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy accelerates, extraction has become central to the clean-energy transition and the geopolitics of critical minerals. White Gold takes viewers inside a rapidly expanding industry, where multinational corporations, state-owned firms, and foreign investors compete for control of a vital battery mineral. Through rare on-the-ground access, the film reveals how mining, water use, and industrial infrastructure are transforming landscapes, groundwater systems, and Indigenous and rural communities.