Salt and Fire

Werner Herzog's Salt and Fire (2016) is a drama to watch online on iFILM, shot almost entirely on the Bolivian altiplano. Scientist Laura Sommariba (Veronica Ferres) arrives with a team to document an ecological disaster. At the airport, the head of the responsible corporation — played by Michael Shannon — has the group taken hostage.

Then the film pivots. Herzog is not interested in the standoff as a thriller; he is interested in what happens when two adversaries end up alone on the Salar de Uyuni, one of the world's largest salt flats, with a restless volcano somewhere in the distance. Gael García Bernal appears in a smaller role. Shannon brings the quality that makes him compelling — a man whose logic never quite becomes legible.

Herzog's films keep returning to the same premise: what does landscape do to human dispute? Here it threatens to answer definitively. Watch Salt and Fire online on iFILM.