Chilean microbiologist Professor Cristina Dorador rings the alarm bell many others have been ringing for decades. The wholesale and indiscriminate use of antibiotics has given those bad microbes it once easily defeated an opportunity to mutate and resist antibiotics killing an estimated five million people a year.
We follow Dorador on an expedition to the Atacama Desert in Chile home of a diverse but dwindling variety of microorganisms she believes may be the foundation for a “superbug” defeating antibiotic.
Chilean governmental approvals for lithium mining in the Atacama region is destroying the environment and indigenous culture and their economy including the possible miracle microorganisms that would place antibiotics ahead of the mutation game.
The world’s obsession of lithium to power batteries creates lithium demand and obsequious to commercial interests’ Chilean government promotion of lithium mining in the Atacama may be destroying the development of a new generation of antibiotics.
The question of what would happen if miracle microorganisms were unearthed in the Atacama is not broached. A new “mining” of them equally destructive to the Atacama?
Tremendous cinematography of the Atacama Desert!
This 20-minute short documentary is a U.K., Chilean and Swedish co-production and is directed by Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff.
“Life Invisible” will have its world premiere 29April/2May2025.
RKS 2025 Documentary Rating 64/100.
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