WATER FOR LIFE
(director/writer: Will Parrinello; screenwriter: Sarah Krass; cinematographer: Vicente France; editor: Maria Jose Calderon; music: Christopher Hedge; cast: Diego Luna (Narrator), Lila Downs (Ko water song), Daniela Millaleo (Ko water song), Alberto Curamil (Indian chief, Chile), Francisco Pineda (Farmer, El Salvador), Berta Cáceres (leader of the Lenca people, Honduras), (); Runtime: 91; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Maria Jose Calderon, Will Parrinello, Rick Tejada-Flores; Mill Valley Film Group/PBS; 2023-in Spanish with English subtitles)
“Passionate activist documentary on the importance of water as a global life and death issue.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Will Parrinello (“Emile Norman: By his own Design”/”The New Environmentalists: From Guatemala to the Congo”) is director and producer of this fact-based and hard-hitting political documentary on environmental issues concerning water rights.
It’s narrated by Diego Luna with the original song Ko (Water) sung by the Mexican American Lila Downs and Chilean singer-songwriter Daniela Millaleo.
Over the last two decades in Chile, El Salvador, and Honduras there occurred some of the biggest battles waged over water rights. The documentary shows the uphill struggle facing these brave community leaders of these countries fighting to have clean water as a matter of survival.
The film asks the sensible environmental questions of how greedy and corrupt businesses can be forced to comply with laws regulating the quality of water if governments are corrupt.
In Chile, Alberto Curamil is the chief of the Mapuche people, who live along the river. The government in 2013 enacted without consulting the people hydroelectric projects using water as a commodity. When Curamil and the Mapuche sued the government for violating their UN-sanctioned rights to the water, it resulted in Curamil first being shot by the police and then sent to prison for crimes he didn’t do.
In El Salvador, Francisco Pineda is a subsistence corn-grower farmer. Without clean water his farming community can’t exist. In 2002 the Pacific Rim, a Canadian-based company, was allowed to mine his community for gold. The mining operation would have contaminated the water if not stopped by Pineda‘s anti-mining movement in the courts. He thereby became the target of the mine operators and his group was violently attacked.
In Honduras, the late Berta Cáceres, was the female leader of the Lenca people who tried to stop the government from building hydroelectric dams throughout Honduras without ever consulting the Lenca people. Cáceres put up roadblocks to stop construction, but the government was determined to stop her peaceful demonstrations and fired at the unarmed demonstrators, killing many of them. When her plans stopped the unsound government projects, it resulted in her assassination.
The passionate activist documentary on the importance of water as a global life and death issue, reasonably urges the governments to have their economies in harmony with the people’s environmental concerns.
This is a timely reminder for Americans to beware that it now has a fascist president who admires the way these Central and South American autocrats operate in the dark and will always side against the people.
It played at the Mill Valley Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 4/18/2025 GRADE: B+
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