Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
Water For Life - Movie Review by Lisa Blanck
In 2023, Water For Life screened in the Documentary feature category at the Florida Film Festival. Since 2023, the film, narrated by Diego Luna, has garnered many awards across the country, and I definitely recommend catching it. https://waterforlife.film/ is a link to the trailer.
Water For Life is a beautifully shot, engrossing documentary about the fight for water rights in Latin American communities. Encompassing a 12-year period, three indigenous peoples in Chile, El Salvador and Honduras take up the fight for the survival of their tribes and towns against corrupt, polluting multi-national corporations. The corporations fight them with lies and brutality, both in court and on the ground. Dams, hydroelectric plants and gold mines are coming to their sacred, native lands, and the development of all three will poison the water, the land and the people who have lived for generations in their communities. When we send exploratory ships to other planets, what’s the first evidence of life we search for? Water. Yet here on earth, we poison and squander it, as if there’s an endless supply. Frightening.
In Water For Life, though winning the support of outside environmental groups aids the people in their struggle against immense power, it is the overwhelming strength of will exhibited by each and every community member that will win your heart. The leaders all face tremendous risks, as do their families. Yet they persevere - they know what is at stake. Each of them willing to be beaten, be imprisoned or even die to preserve what they may lose for eternity. Producer/Director Will Parrinello tells In Focus that he is “drawn to the stories of individuals and communities who are actively struggling to protect the earth for all of us, the earth which they see as sacred.” Each of us, like Berta Caceres in Honduras, Alberto Curamil in Chile and Francisco Pineda in El Salvador, can, in fact, be catalysts for change.
