What do you need to say about climate? How does it affect your community? And the world? Bring light to all these problems you know exist and provide us your vision. In this edition of the We Art Water Film Festival, we have added the climate crisis we are experiencing to the theme of access to water and sanitation. The world needs what your vision can provide. Tell it in the words of cinema!

The overexploitation of aquifers is worsening the problems caused by the natural pollution of water in many areas with hydric stress. The levels of fluoride, arsenic and other chemical compounds that are harmful to health affect millions of people all around the world, causing a very serious health issue. This is the case described by the Mexican short film Necesidad que mata (A need that kills), finalist of the We Art Water Film Festival 3.

The access to water or the lack thereof defines two types of homes: the comfortable ones, which allow a dignified and healthy life, and the ones which cannot provide their owners with anything remotely similar. Many of the 2.185 billion people with no safe access to water dream of having it at home. This is the case of the Cameroonian protagonist of the short film Utopia, finalist of the We Art Water Film Festival 3.

Water shortages in many Venezuelan cities are worsened by power cuts and the deterioration of public services, especially affecting the poorest neighborhoods. Most of their inhabitants fight every day to obtain water outside the cities with the serious risks it entails. Others have been implementing a water survival strategy for decades. This is featured in the short film La camisa sucia (The stained shirt), finalist of the We Art Water Film Festival 3.

The climate crisis can cause a severe demographic imbalance in countries that already experience a considerable water stress: uncontrolled internal migrations, less visible than cross-border ones, but with increasingly uncertain consequences. A study by the World Bank draws the attention of the international community and takes a first step towards the creation of a model to follow up a phenomenon that may affect more than 140 million people.

In India, the enormous challenge of achieving the sustainable growth of a country that in a few years will be the most populated in the world, should be based on avoiding the ruin of small farmers, empowering them to fight drought, the degradation of the land, single-crop farming and social imbalance. The construction of small self-managed reservoirs brings life to the most impoverished farmers and is a development model to be followed in semiarid regions.

The oil spills in the Marañón River cause an environmental and human disaster that reveals the defenselessness suffered by many Amazonia inhabitants when faced with the legal maze in the fight for their human rights. The short film Cuninico, when the rain forest turns black, finalist of the We Art Water Film Festival 4, shows the marginalization of the natives whose lives and economy directly depend on the river.

The periodic crises in the African “Hunger Belt” have provided a more accurate and effective vision of the relationship between desertification and human activities. Regardless of the droughts, poor resource exploitation practices have been determinants of land degradation. The African Great Green Wall project gives hope to the Sahel, one of the most vulnerable areas to the current climate crisis.