Altiplano 2010

In a quiet, restrained drama, Grace, a photographer, carries the weight of a forced image: she is devastated after being coerced to photograph the killing of her guide during a perilous moment in Iraq. Returning to Belgium, she quietly withdraws the photograph from circulation even after it had already been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, a symbol of both recognition and moral doubt that haunts her. Her husband, Max, an ophthalmologist, leaves their life behind to work at an eye clinic high in the Andes of Peru, drawn by a different kind of calling and the distance it offers from the images that haunt Grace.

Soon after, a local mine spills mercury, poisoning the people of the nearby village of Turubamba. Grace’s husband and his fellow doctors notice signs that something toxic is at work and begin gathering data and trying to understand the source of the illness. The doctors’ scientific curiosity is tangled with the villagers’ fear and anger, as they wrestle with an unknown toxin and the toll it takes on their families.

Among the villagers is Saturnina, a young woman who loses her fiancé to the contamination. When the doctors arrive, Saturnina’s fiancé’s mother outright rejects their request to examine the body, and the community’s rage shifts toward the medical team. The situation erupts in violence: Max is stoned to death by the crowd, a brutal moment that cements the fragility of trust between the outsiders and Turubamba’s residents. Saturnina leads a peaceful, but ultimately futile, demonstration against the mine’s truck drivers, a sign of the town’s desire for accountability that cannot be fully satisfied through protest alone. After the mine’s operations cease, Saturnina makes a desperate choice, drinking mercury herself and filming the moment on a camera that Max had dropped when he was killed, a haunting record of loss that mirrors Grace’s own unresolved grief.

Driven by a need to understand the events that took Max from her, Grace sets out on a personal journey to the place where he died. She is welcomed by Saturnina’s mother, who offers hospitality as Grace confronts the intertwined stories of longing, illness, and retaliation. Grace watches the powerful video made by Saturnina, a document that reframes the tragedy from a new, intimate perspective. In the end, Grace participates in Saturnina’s funeral and slowly allows herself to begin moving beyond the profound mourning she has carried for her husband, finding a path forward through the memory of the life they shared and the mysteries that still surround their deaths.