Fe Grande

Only a few people are living in the overwhelming and barren mountain masses of the Atacama desert in Northern Chile. They are firmly rooted in this dried-out soil. The culture of their ancestors goes back centuries, as the Loa river has always brought them their lifeblood. But due to the intervention of a mining company, levelling the mountains upstream, their sole life source threatens to run dry slowly. Still, the last desert-dwellers retain great faith until the bitter end. They try out different ways to keep the stream running, so they can keep laying out their fertile fields. Great Faith is a document about the last traces of a rivulet that once was a river. Indeed, these are literally the last shots: shortly after the completion of the film the Loa ran dry permanently. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)