Mongabay’s new short documentary The Time of Water premiered Dec. 16 at the Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture, in Spain.
Directed by Pablo Albarenga and produced with support from the Pulitzer Center and OpenDemocracy, the 18-minute documentary explores the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance and its fight to protect one of the world’s most vital sources of freshwater.
A vast network of waterways born in the glaciers of the Andes in Ecuador and Peru descend to form the headwaters of the innumerable rivers that feed the Marañón River and, ultimately, the Amazon River. The water flowing from these headwaters supplies much of the Amazon Basin, sustaining the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest.
The filmmakers follow two Indigenous leaders: Uyunkar Domingo Peas Nampichkai of the Achuar people from Ecuador and Wrays Pérez Ramírez of the Wampís Nation from Peru.
In the film, Peas and Pérez travel from village to village along the tributaries of the Marañón, the mainstem source of the Amazon River, to strengthen the alliance, which unites more than 30 Indigenous nations across 35 million hectares (86.5 million acres) of rainforest straddling the Ecuador-Peru border, an area the size of Germany.
The documentary takes a fly-on-the-wall approach, observing the everyday lives and spiritual connection that the two Indigenous leaders have with the water that fuels life on their land. The full story with details of the journey is available here.
“We don’t live without water,” Pérez told Mongabay contributor and the documentary’s producer, Francesc Badia i Dalmases. “That’s why we have to make a great alliance to recover the rivers [and] the jungle.”
The Indigenous lands that safeguard this critical water source are among the planet’s most vital areas to protect, but their guardians have faced relentless attacks for decades.
The Amazon Sacred Headwaters region faces growing threats from the fossil fuel industry, including frequent oil leaks into the Corrientes, Cashacaño, Pastaza and other rivers, as well as pressure and environmental destruction from mining and logging.
In November 2024, two Wampís leaders, not involved in the documentary, traveled to the U.K. to urge international banks to stop financing fossil fuel projects in the region.
Peas and Pérez place their bets on unity and dialogue to safeguard their homes and the rest of the planet.
“Our concept is: Amazonia — a living being, which has a spiritual connection with the Indigenous world,” Peas told the filmmakers. “Either we unite in the face of the climate crisis, [a] formidable challenge that is ruining our world and the entire planet, or we expire.”
Banner image: The Barcelona premiere of the documentary The Time of Water. Image courtesy of the Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture.
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