Already visited Paris, Rome, Berlin, Madrid and the other great cities of Europe? Looking for a truly unusual tourist spot? Then how about the silver mines of Potosi in Bolivia, billed as "the best adventure in the Cerro Ricco," where you can don helmets, gloves and overalls and descend into the dark, stiflingly hot, and polluted mines to watch real Bolivian miners at work?

CAN'T DO IT IN EUROPE portrays this new phenomenon of 'reality tourism,' whereby bored American or European travelers seek out real-life experiences as exciting tourist "adventures." The film follows a group of such international tourists as they visit the mines in Potosi—the poorest city in the poorest nation in Latin America—where Bolivian miners work by hand, just as they did centuries ago, to extract silver from the earth.

Led by their Bolivian tour guide, a former miner himself, and walking through constricted, muddy and poorly ventilated tunnels, breathing fetid air laced with arsenic, asbestos and toxic gases, and occasionally dodging fast-moving carts loaded with silver ore, the tourists take in the "sights" with goggle-eyed amazement and not a little uneasiness. Although they give the miners recommended gifts of coca leaves and soft drinks, the cultural encounter is no less awkward, with the miners cracking jokes about the "gringitos" and wondering, "God knows why they come to see us."

Select Accolades

• 2007 Society for Visual Anthropology/AAA Film Festival
• 2007 Latin American Studies Association Film Festival
• 2007 MoMA Documentary Fortnight
• 2006 Cinema du Réel
• 2005 Malmo Latin American Film Festival
• 2005 Leipzig Documentary Festival