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Steel Life

View on the Pragda STREAM site

Peruvian director Manuel Bauer offers a fascinating journey aboard a freight train across Peru, an incredible descent from the Altiplano lead mines, at 4,800 meters altitude, to the Pacific shore.

Set amidst gorgeous landscapes, this understated portrait alternates between a road movie peppered with local flair and the social underpinnings of a country victim to Neo-colonialism.

As the train exits its stations, the film uncovers the country’s disillusioned inhabitants. We find a century-old bar that refuses to disappear, a nurse trying to help children with too much lead in their blood to pass through a metal detector, and a city that devours itself with the memories of the people who live in it.

The documentary exposes the paradox of a country rich in resources but poor in human services. While the country celebrates Independence Day with populist speeches and street parades, its population wavers between skepticism and resignation as its resources disappear aboard foreign cargo ships.

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