“Water Is Life”: Docuseries ‘The Struggle For Mother Water’ Examines Precious Resource That’s Becoming Out Of Reach To Billions – Berlinale Series Market

In 2010 the United Nations passed a resolution calling access to clean water a fundamental human right. It wasn’t an idle declaration.

“More than 2 billion people don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water,” notes filmmaker Michael Zelniker. “Almost 4 billion don’t have access to reliable, consistent sanitation.”

Zelniker explores this dire reality in his comprehensive documentary series The Struggle for Mother Water, which was invited to take part in the Berlinale Series Market, part of the EFM. The Struggle for Mother Water is one of only three nonfiction series accorded that honor, joining The American Revolution, the series by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, and Gerçek Şamanın İzinde (In Pursuit of the True Shaman), directed by Talha Berkay Baş.

For the series, Zelniker spent the better part of a year traveling the globe to document the near impossibility for many people – particularly outside urban areas – to obtain potable water. In the Choriso District of South Ethiopia, for example, he finds people drawing water from a polluted rivulet.

“We’re collecting this water because this is all there is,” a woman tells him. “We have no choice. Due to lack of clean water, we have been forced to fetch, to use, to drink this dirty, contaminated water.”

In Darjeeling, West Bengal, India, trash clogs a source of drinking water. A man tells Zelniker, “During heavy rain, a lot of filth gets into this source… We’re uncertain of the quality of this water but we’re still forced to drink it.” Boiling water to reduce contaminants isn’t a practical solution in places without consistent electricity. As a result, an untold number of people worldwide, including children, are dying from diseases transmitted through dirty water.

It’s not only in the developing world where access to clean water has become immensely difficult. Zelniker visits the Athabasca River in the Fort McKay First Nation of Northern Alberta in Canada, speaking with First Nations environmentalist Jean L’hommecourt. Tar sands oil refining in the area has polluted ground water, notes The Contrapuntal in a report that said in 2022, “toxic byproducts like iron, arsenic, naphthenic acids, sand, clay, residual bitumen, and various chemicals, spilled into the surrounding wetlands, poisoning the rivers on which Jean’s and other native communities depend.”

“It’s a crime against the environment. It’s an environmental crime,” L’hommecourt tells Zelniker. “It angers me that we’re second-class citizens in our own territory, in our own homelands.”

Climate change, industrial pollution, inadequate sanitation that pollutes drinking water sources with human waste — these are all factors in the water crisis. The 8-part series also explores the commodification of water, which has reaped billions of dollars for big companies while creating shortages for ordinary people.

In the Vosges region of Northeastern France, known for its pristine mineral drinking water, Nestle has scooped up the resource and packaged it as Eau Vittel. Industrialists are “plundering the water,” a local woman tells the filmmaker. “And so, there is a lack of water here and it shows everywhere. It can be seen in nature; it can be seen through the insects that are disappearing… There is no more work here because when there is no more water, there’s no more employment, there’s no more life.”

It’s a similar situation in San Bernardino, California, the series says, where BlueTriton/Primo Brands (which bought Nestle’s North American water business) operates. The company is “extracting water from water sources that we rely on, that we depend on for our own drinking water, for agriculture, for the various uses of water,” Zelniker comments. “They’re extracting water for almost no money — maybe a quarter-a-cent a gallon — and then selling it back to us for a huge, huge, huge profit.”

World Water Day, established over 30 years ago by the UN General Assembly, will be observed on March 22. The water crisis isn’t gender neutral, the world organization affirms.

“In 53 countries with available data, women and girls spend 250 million hours per day on water collection – over three times more than men and boys,” the UN writes on its website. “The global water crisis affects everyone – but not equally. Where people lack safe drinking water and sanitation close to home, inequalities flourish, with women and girls bearing the brunt. They collect water. They manage water. They care for people made sick by unsafe water. They lose time, health, safety, and opportunities… This makes the water crisis a women’s crisis.”

The gender dimension to the crisis is reflected in Zelniker’s approach to the series.

“Primarily, it is women who are leading the fight to protect and defend water all over the world,” he said at the Q&A. “And that’s why women voice probably 90 percent of our documentary.”

Zelniker’s directing credits include the 2022 documentary The Issue with Tissue – A Boreal Love Story. As part of his work to protect the environment, the Montreal native completed Climate Reality Project training with former Vice President Al Gore and became a member of the Climate Reality Project’s Leadership Corps. At the Q&A, Zelniker shared his reaction to the Trump administration move last week rescinding a rule that provides the legal basis for the U.S. government to combat climate change.

“My response to the political leadership who are really in service of the industries that are profiting off of deregulation is what are you going to say to your children and grandchildren when they come to you and ask you, what were you thinking?” he commented. “Because things are only going to get worse. And not only do we have an obligation to the generations to come to leave them a habitable planet, but what about our ancestors who left us this beautiful planet that we could thrive in? Do we have no sense of responsibility, no sense of obligation to them to thank them for what they did for us? So, I don’t know how else to approach people who are driven by a profit motive that disregards anything other than the almighty dollar except to appeal to them on that level because their children and grandchildren are going to come to them too and ask them what were they thinking? As Don Henley said so well, ‘There are no luggage racks on hearses.’ We’re not taking anything with us. And the only thing that really matters is the legacy we leave behind.”

Zelniker sees the invitation to the Berlinale Series Market as a validation for The Struggle for Mother Water and its potential.

“It’s really great encouragement for a project like this. The criteria of this particular segment, the Berlinale Series Market Selects program, is recognition of its commercial or market viability,” Zelniker says. “This is encouraging because sometimes with subjects like this, we do find that people prefer to look the other way. And for me, knowing that whoever this jury, this committee was that selected these projects, feel that there is real market viability for it just says to me that we have an opportunity to get the message, the important message in our documentary seen and heard as far and wide as possible.”

The filmmaker added, “So, what are my hopes? That every major broadcaster, streaming service in the world sees this important message as something that they want to project. As James Baldwin said, ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,’ and they have the platforms where these important stories can be seen and heard by the wider community.”