Lithium Ghosts

Directed & Produced by: Nicolas Muñoz

Stage:
- Development
Locations:
- Argentina,
- Chile,
- Bolivia
Updated: May 14, 2026
Project Type:
- Feature
Project Style:
- Hybrid
Theme Subject:

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Logline

To power our smartphones and EVs, the 'green' lithium boom is stripping the Argentine Andes of its water and ancient cultures. Now, a dedicated biologist and local activists face a race against time to expose this devastating trade-off and stop the destruction before it's too late.

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Lithium Ghosts - Teaser_2026

Synopsis

In the high-altitude deserts of the 'Lithium Triangle,' the world is mining its way out of the climate crisis. Lithium is marketed as the holy grail of clean energy, but the paradox on the ground is brutal: to save the global climate, multinational corporations are actively draining one of the driest ecosystems on Earth. The true cost of our "green" revolution is liquid, trading irreplaceable groundwater for battery power.

Biologist Enrique Derlindati traverses these

...

Biologist Enrique Derlindati traverses these dusty roads like a detective in a crime thriller. Sleeping in the freezing wild, he is on a high-stakes mission to gather forensic evidence of this ecological collapse. Specifically, he is tracking the rapid starvation of the Andean flamingo to prove a direct, undeniable link between lithium extraction and the crashing of the region's underground water table.

Lithium Ghosts shifts the focus from geopolitical headlines to the gritty reality of frontline resistance, where science and indigenous survival intersect. The flamingo is the canary in the coal mine. Enrique’s biological data is the exact weapon that local defenders—like Ariel, a salt harvester witnessing the industrial takeover of his home, and the Urus people—desperately need to challenge the mining giants in court and in the public eye.

They share a grim, immediate reality: if the water vanishes and the flamingos die, living Indigenous communities will be the next to be permanently displaced.

By capturing this high-stakes fight with a cinematic perspective, the film becomes more than a record of loss—it is an actionable tool designed to arm local legal battles and demand corporate accountability. In our global rush toward tomorrow, Lithium Ghosts forces those fighting for a ‘green revolution’ to confront the devastating collateral damage it leaves behind.

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Background

WHY THIS FILM?
Audiences today are often paralyzed by "climate fatigue," viewing lithium solely as a guilt-free savior. Lithium Ghosts cuts through this apathy. It is not a lecture; it is an invitation to pause. By following the frontline protectors of the salt flats, we move viewers from passive observation to visceral empathy, asking a critical question:

In our rush toward a green tomorrow, what are we leaving behind?

ACCESS & VIABILITY
"Access is built on time,

...

In our rush toward a green tomorrow, what are we leaving behind?

ACCESS & VIABILITY
"Access is built on time, not just permits." Since the first self-funded expedition in 2022-24, we have cultivated a relationship of deep, mutual trust with biologist Enrique Derlindati’s scientific team and local Indigenous leaders.

AUDIENCE STRATEGY
Our vision for Lithium Ghosts is to transcend the traditional documentary 90 minutes format, operating instead as a "living ecosystem." We aim to disrupt the Global North’s clean-energy complacency while providing tangible tools for frontline defenders.

+Direct Legal Empowerment (Policy/Social): Ensure our 2026 expedition data (GPS tracking, water-table analysis) is handed directly to Indigenous leaders as actionable legal evidence.

+Economic Solidarity (Socio-Economic): Establish direct-compensation mechanisms for affected families, channeling 100% of fine-art sales back to the communities.

+Transmedia Engagement (Educational): Expand the film’s lifespan through a parallel podcast and scientific journalism strategy.

+A Disruptive Land Art Installation
Following our 2025 partnership with SONY, we produced a series of portraits printed to the highest fine-art gallery standards. Instead of displaying them for elites —which feels deeply extractive—we will implement a permanent, open-air "Land Art" installation. We will install these museum-quality prints directly on the barren salt flats and within the Uru villages, letting the harsh Andean elements degrade them in real-time. This mirrors the environmental erosion these communities suffer. Crucially, this initiative is guided by the community’s will: it amplifies their message globally and attracts conscious tourism—one of their few remaining sustainable livelihoods.

+Viewer Actions

1.The "Plus One" EV Challenge: We challenge audiences to bring a friend who owns or is considering an Electric Vehicle to our screenings to spark a critical dialogue.

2.One-Click Accountability: QR codes at installations will allow viewers to send pre-drafted messages to tech manufacturers demanding transparent supply chains.

3.The "Delay the Upgrade" Campaign: A social media initiative encouraging viewers to delay upgrading their mobile devices by just one year.

SO, WHY DO AUDIENCES NEED TO SEE IT NOW?
While the Global North celebrates electric vehicles, the true environmental and human cost remains hidden in the vanishing waters of the Andes. By leveraging our transmedia ecosystem—including native micro-docs and a companion podcast—we bypass traditional gatekeepers to deliver this vital counter-narrative directly to the younger generations who will inherit the crisis. Anchored by our "Glocal" approach, we empower local communities first while building a highly engaged global audience from day one, equipping viewers everywhere with the unvarnished truth they need to demand a truly just climate solution.

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Participants

Enrique Derlindati

Scientific Lead & Protagonist

Participant

Enrique Derlindati

Scientific Lead & Protagonist

Dr. Derlindati is a Professor of Conservation Biology at the National University of Salta and a member of the IUCN Flamingo Specialist Group. With over 30 years of fieldwork in the High Andes, he is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on the Andean and Puna flamingos. His research, supported by organizations like WCS and BirdLife International, provides the critical ecological baseline to understand the impact of lithium extraction on wetlands. In Lithium Ghosts, Enrique acts not just as a consultant, but as the narrative guide—a "detective of the wild" racing to decode the language of the birds before their habitat is silenced forever.

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Ariel

ARIEL | The Salt Harvester

Participant

Ariel

ARIEL | The Salt Harvester

Ariel is a generational salt harvester in Salinas Grandes, Jujuy, maintaining an ancestral trade that predates modern industry. Living on the edge of the great white desert with his wife, Vanesa, and their three children, he carves his livelihood manually from the earth.
For Ariel, the salar is not a resource, but a home. Witnessing the rapid encroachment of multinational lithium mining, he has become a quiet but firm voice of concern for his community. His struggle is intimate and existential: he fights to ensure that the water—and the future of his children—does not evaporate along with the lithium.

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Andean Communities

THE ANDEAN COMMUNITIES | Guardians of the Water

Participant

Andean Communities

THE ANDEAN COMMUNITIES | Guardians of the Water

Inhabiting the high-altitude deserts of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia for millennia, the Kolla and Atacama indigenous nations are not merely residents, but integral parts of the ecosystem. To them, the salt flats are living entities, and water is the sacred blood of the earth (Pachamama). Facing the rapid industrialization of their territories for the world’s "green transition," they stand as the frontline defenders of the Puna. Their resistance is not just political, but spiritual: a fight to ensure that the global rush for lithium does not erase their ancient past, nor the fragile biodiversity they have protected for centuries.

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Style & Tone

To document this fragile environment without disrupting it, we choose genuine intimacy over traditional, staged setups. This minimal footprint eliminates intrusive machinery, allowing for deep, non-extractive trust with vulnerable communities.

This intimacy is rooted in collaborative consent. Stepping away from cold statistics, we rely on visual poetry and sensory metaphors to translate environmental trauma into raw emotion.

Ultimately, our goal is to capture the

...

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

THE HOOK (The Two Voids & The Sonic Motif)
We open with a powerful visual rhyme: a Tesla floating silently in space, cutting to a traditional Uru canoe motionless on a dry Andean salt flat. The silence is broken by the sharp chirp of a baby flamingo from an empty nest—a sonic motif whose artificial origin (a cell phone notification) will only be revealed later in the film. To power one dream, we are draining another.

THE INVESTIGATION (Argentina - The Present)
We follow biologist Enrique Derlindati. Anchored by his philosophy—"The data must be objective, but the scientist does not"—he operates as an environmental detective. He breaks ice at 5:30 AM to tag flamingos, crossing paths with Ariel, an Indigenous salt harvester whose water source is evaporating into a mirage beneath the hum of industrial lithium pumps.

THE GHOSTS (Bolivia - The Warning)
The journey crosses into Bolivia to the cracked remains of Lake Poopó. Here, we encounter the Uru people—the first casualties of the extractive frontier. In a defiant act of memory, we install museum-quality portraits of the Urus directly onto the salt flats. We document the physical erosion of these faces by the harsh climate, a visual metaphor for the visceral sensations of nature vanishing forever.

THE MIRROR (Chile - The Future)
We reach the Atacama Desert, the heavily industrialized endpoint. Here, the desert has been transformed into the Global North’s dumping ground. We witness an apocalyptic landscape of industrial waste: massive piles of discarded truck tires, sprawling graveyards of abandoned vehicles, and literal mountains of "fast fashion" clothing—the physical remains of the consumerism that drives the lithium demand.

THE DEFIANCE (The Resolution)
The film concludes with the transformation of grief into action. We return to Enrique in his laboratory, turning raw field data into conclusive scientific evidence—the tangible, palpable tool that frontline communities will use to defend their territory. The final frames rest on the Uru portraits on the salt flats, slowly dissolving under the Andean sun and salt: a poetic, haunting testament to the fragile memory of a land being erased.

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Team

Nicolas Muñoz

Director & Producer

Team

Nicolas Muñoz

Director & Producer

Nicolás Muñoz Documentary Filmmaker & DOP | Buenos Aires, Argentina He studied photography and cinematography at ORT schools, later specializing in documentary filmmaking at INA (France), and honing his craft at UBA (Argentina) and Maine Media College (USA). At age 24, after graduating from film school, he began a 13-year career as a correspondent for Associated Press Television. Covering breaking news across Latin America and beyond, Muñoz reported from extraordinary places and captured urgent, human-centered stories. In 2014, with two young children, he made the difficult decision to leave the news world—stepping away from a stable path into one that was more uncertain, especially financially. He shifted his focus from news to longform documentary work, channeling his journalistic experience into a visual storytelling style that blends strong imagery, emotion, and narrative clarity—even in complex or sensitive environments. In 2018, he won Best Adventure Film at the Banff Film Festival in Canada. Since then, his work has continued to evolve across formats and platforms, earning recognition such as the Sony World Photography Award in 2024 and becoming a Sony Alpha Partner. Today, he collaborates with NGOs, broadcasters, and institutions to tell grounded, human-centered stories with lasting impact. His work explores the intersections of social justice, environmental crisis, and resilience. With a deeply personal approach and a collaborative mindset, Muñoz often works directly with communities to amplify their voices and build powerful narratives from the ground up.

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Juliette Igier

Field Producer & Investigative Journalist

Team

Juliette Igier

Field Producer & Investigative Journalist

A distinguished journalist and filmmaker with decades of experience covering social and environmental justice across Argentina and Latin America. Juliette has a proven track record of bringing complex, high-stakes investigations to international audiences. She previously work together with Nico Muñoz on the acclaimed documentary Orphans of Lake Poopó (Orphelins du lac Poopó) for ARTE France, a project that showcased her ability to blend rigorous journalism with compelling human narratives. With a deep-rooted understanding of the region’s socio-political landscape, Juliette provides critical investigative depth and a bridge to major European broadcasters for Lithium Ghosts.

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Diana Cervantes

Impact & Transmedia Producer

Team

Diana Cervantes

Impact & Transmedia Producer

Award-winning visual journalist (New York/New Mexico) specializing in science-based stories and interspecies relationships. Her work, recognized by the New Mexico Press Association, bridges the gap between hard data and storytelling. Diana will lead the Podcast component and scientific reportage.

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Madeline Finkel

Story Editor & Creative Consultant

Team

Madeline Finkel

Story Editor & Creative Consultant

I am a writer, artist, and filmmaker based in New York currently completing my MFA in Film at NYU Tisch. As a Fulbright scholar to Argentina in 2019, I directed my first documentary. My most recent work was recognized by the British Council for the Arts and One World Media which named her one of "14 filmmakers to watch." She has produced work for ARTEtv, NOWNESS, the Barbican Centre London, and others.

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Jean Garner

Executive Producer

Team

Jean Garner

Executive Producer

Jean is an Academy Award-nominated Executive Producer, Commissioning Editor, and seasoned journalist with over three decades of high-stakes international media experience. A winner of a Peabody Award, two International Emmys, and a Murrow Award, she brings world-class editorial oversight and global industry connectivity to Lithium Ghosts. She served for a decade as the Senior Executive Producer for Al Jazeera English’s flagship documentary strand, Witness, overseeing over 400 documentaries. Her Executive Producer credits include the Oscar-nominated documentary short Chau, Beyond the Lines and the Emmy-winning Witness series. Jean ensures the project meets the highest international editorial standards and distribution viability.

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Budget

This section includes information about this project.

Festival independent camera journey camera producer journey impact award festival creative film story festival camera. Story camera editing director film production cinema journey team story story.

Rights

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Our Ask

THE CRITICAL WINDOW: WHAT WE ARE SEEKING

Lithium Ghosts is entering its most decisive phase. As the Andean flamingo nesting season begins, our window to capture the hard evidence needed to challenge the global "green" narrative is rapidly closing. We are launching an urgent October impact campaign designed to bridge the vital gap between scientific data and Indigenous resistance.

With our first major shooting block in the Argentine Puna already in motion alongside Dr. Derlindati, we are now seeking the strategic and financial bridge to realize the film’s full cinematic and impact potential:

Production Funding: To scale our expedition across the entire "Lithium Triangle" (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile) and acquire the GPS satellite trackers needed to generate groundbreaking, real-time environmental data.
Strategic Partnerships: We are actively looking for visionary co-producers, an Impact Producer, and distribution allies to help us amplify this vital counter-narrative on a global scale.

PROJECT STATUS

Lithium Ghosts is currently in advanced development. Having already conducted foundational research, our timeline to completion is:

Completed (2022–2025):
Initial scouting in the Lithium Triangle; established deep relationships with frontline communities and Enrique; produced a high-end SONY exhibition (2025) that inspired our impact strategy.

Pre-Production (Jan–Sept 2026):
Finalizing narrative structure; locking European co-production agreements; and securing foundational grants (e.g., Redford Center) to greenlight principal photography.

Principal Photography (October 2026):
Core production block in the Andean Puna. We will film the primary narrative, gather scientific field data, and physically install the museum-quality prints on the salt flats.

Follow-up Shoot (Feb–March 2027):

We will capture three key arcs: the physical erosion of our Uru portraits (Bolivia); the flooded, apocalyptic dumping grounds of the Atacama Desert (Chile); and Enrique’s shift from research to direct action (Argentina). After processing his evidence, Enrique returns to the Puna to arm Indigenous leaders—broadcasting his "smoking gun" findings on a grassroots local radio station to ensure the truth reaches the wider community.

Post-Production (April–August 2027): Editing, sound, and color. Concurrently, our transmedia team will produce short-form native social content to build our grassroots digital community in the Global South.

We are seeking:

Funding,
Co-Production Partners,
International Co-Production,
Sales Agent,
Broadcast Partner

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Lithium Ghosts

Logline

Clips

Participants

Enrique Derlindati

Enrique Derlindati

Ariel

Ariel

Andean Communities

Andean Communities

Team

Nicolas Muñoz

Nicolas Muñoz

Juliette Igier

Juliette Igier

Diana Cervantes

Diana Cervantes

Madeline Finkel

Madeline Finkel

Jean Garner

Jean Garner

Budget

Rights

Stills

Our Ask