Titled Ignacy Domeyko: Living Legacy, the film is slated to debut in December.
Crews have already recorded at Warsaw’s Royal Castle, Kraków’s Jagiellonian University – which awarded Domeyko an honorary doctorate in 1887 – and sites in Chile’s Coquimbo and Atacama regions that he surveyed.
“Domeyko was more than just a professor. He was an apostle of science and education in Chile,” the filmmakers quote an 1889 Santiago obituary in the script, saying the phrase captures their narrative arc.
Born in 1802 in what is now Belarus, Domeyko fought in Poland’s failed November 1830 uprising, studied at Paris’s École des Mines and accepted a Chilean government offer to modernize mineral extraction, arriving in 1838.
He introduced laboratory teaching, mapped ore deposits and later served 16 years as rector of the University of Chile.
His cosmopolitan identity lies at the heart of the documentary. In 1849, on taking Chilean citizenship, he wrote: “I may now never change my citizenship, but God grants me hope that wherever I may be—whether in the Cordilleras or in Paneriai—I shall die a Lithuanian.”
The term “Lithuanian” at that time designated any inhabitant of the territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which comprised parts of Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Latvia, and Moldova.
Bellido told reporters the production team has interviewed more than 30 historians and scientists in eight cities to “connect Domeyko’s trans-Andean life with modern debates on sustainable mining and migrant talent.”
The directors are seeking additional archival footage before editing begins this autumn. If the schedule holds, Chile’s national broadcaster TVN is expected to air the premiere, followed by festival screenings in Poland and France.
Domeyko died in Santiago in 1889, but landmarks bearing his name range from the Cordillera Domeyko range in the Atacama Desert to the mineral domeykite and asteroid 2784 Domeyko – testament, Bellido said, “to a scientist who truly became a citizen of the world.”
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Source: Agencia Mindrun Press, Panteon Narodowy, El Mercurio de Antofagasta, Litoral Press, Guia Minera de Chile, Instituto De Ingenieros De Minas De Chile