
Crisis in Cocaine Valley
In the Peruvian Andes, deep in the rainforest region known as the VRAEM, sits what locals call Cocaine Valley, the largest cocaine production zone on earth. Roughly 200 clandestine laboratories there turn out tons of the drug every month, feeding a chain that runs from peasant coca farmers through couriers, mercenaries guarding jungle airstrips, and the traffickers who move the finished product out. The film follows people at each rung of that chain, using on-the-ground footage and interviews to show how deeply the local economy depends on the trade, and how little the state presence changes on the ground. Covid-19 disrupts the usual routes and buyers, and the film tracks what happens when a drug economy this size suddenly loses its market: laboratories going quiet, workers stranded, prices collapsing. Rather than treating cocaine production as an abstract statistic, the documentary stays close to the families and small operators whose entire livelihood is the drug, and asks what, if anything, replaces it when the supply chain breaks.