The film won Best Documentary Film, Best Documentary from the Visegrad Region, and Best Cinematography, all in the festival’s Opus Bonum section.
According to press materials for Silver, the film "portrays Bolivia’s highest silver mine and the locals who live according to its brutal rules. Danger is ever-present, not just underground, and sometimes the only recourse is to pray to the devil, who's supposed to keep them safe."
In an interview with Variety magazine, Koniarz said: "You live with these people, you become friends with them, you witness their suffering and violence, but you can't change it or react. My reaction to someone else's suffering could have consequences when I'm no longer there. I constantly confronted my own beliefs and prejudices in order to find an insider's perspective."
Internationally acclaimed director Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida, Cold War), who served as executive producer for Silver, described the film as "a sensory and poetic experience ... brutal, hypnotic and profoundly humane."
Born in 1996, Koniarz graduated from the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Katowice, southern Poland. She has lived and worked in Chile, Bolivia and France, and currently splits her time between Warsaw and Cairo.
Her credits include the award-winning documentaries The Dam and Postcards from the Verge.
The Ji.hlava Festival is recognized as one of the most important documentary film events in Central and Eastern Europe.
(mk/gs)
Source: Polish Docs, Variety