Flow (2008)

"Thousands have lived without love," wrote W.H. Auden, "not one without water." And so, every year about two million people (mainly children) die due to the lack of clean, reliable water, more than who die from AIDS or wars. This hard-hitting documentary looks at what might rightly be called the most basic of all human rights and the security issue of our day — water. The film starts in the United States but moves to Bolivia, South Africa, and India. By interviewing leading activists (most notably the physicist Vandana Shiva) it hammers away at the commodification and commercialization of water by the likes of the IMF, the World Bank, Coke, and Nestle. A steady flow of facts and figures accompanies the powerful images. Best of all, the film allows the poor from all over the world, people denied this basic right, to speak for themselves and to tell their own stories. The makers of the film have proposed that the UN Declaration of Human Rights add to its charter the right to water.