Status: Pre-Production

Every Abyss is a Mountain (working title) is a hybrid documentary film about Cerro de Pasco, the self-proclaimed ‘mining capital’ of Peru, and our connection to this tragic place. Both abused and ignored by the state, this polymetal mining city is located fourteen thousand feet above sea level in the Peruvian Andes and it is one of the most polluted places in the world. Through a sensory immersion, this film lays bare the apocalyptic world of mining and its socio-environmental effects as it feeds the larger global economy--from the highly polluting chemicals poisoning the population of this town to the moral corrosion that this perpetuates in the state and its policies. Throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, Cerro de Pasco was an important source of colonial revenue for the Spanish. At the beginning of the 20th century, the US Cerro de Pasco Corporation acquired many of the city's shaft mines in order to consolidate most of the mining activity under a single enterprise. This purchase was funded by J.P. Morgan, Henry Clay Frick, the Hearsts, the Vanderbilts and other Global North industrialists of the Gilded Age. Since then, Cerro de Pasco has been a place where the locals keep dealing with lead poisoning, congenital malformation, lower IQ levels, seizures, organ dysfunction, and even premature death. In 2012, the Peruvian government declared the area around the tailings lakes to be in a state of environmental emergency and allocated $20 million for health programs that to this date have not actually been spent. Today, after all this damage, the Volcan Compañia Minera and Glencore (the world's largest company involved in the mining industry and commodity trading) are looking to develop new mines in the surrounding area.