Film review

Abstract

"“Can anyone really own water?” is essentially the question to which this movie begs an answer. Made over a five-year period by Irena Salina, with interviews of experts from all over the world, Flow (also the acronym for “For Love Of Water”) takes a look at the intersecting concerns about water. It finds human suffering, pollution, scarcity, corruption and corporate profit. The opening shot is that of a puja on the banks of the Ganga, on the one hand a symbol of how sacred water is in Indian culture and on the other hand a poster image for polluted water. This visual paves the way for some unsettling statistics: of the (more than) 6 billion people on earth, a staggering 1.1 billion do not have access to safe, clean drinking water. Approximately 2 million, mostly infants, die every year from water-borne diseases - more deaths than from AIDS or war