Canadian filmmaker Michael Zelniker, who will obtain the Taormina Film Festival‘s Particular Sustainability Award on Thursday night, is on a mission to try to heal the damages humanity is inflicting on planet Earth.
Zelniker, who beforehand helmed the acclaimed 2022 deforestation docuseries “The Issue With Tissue — a Boreal Love Story” — which is able to quickly be taking part in in a brand new minimize at London’s upcoming Raindance Movie Pageant — traveled to 21 international locations to make eight-part docuseries “The Struggle for Mother Water.” The sequence, which premiered on the Berlinale Sequence Market in February, delves into the frontlines of the water disaster by way of the prism of how girls are main the combat to guard and defend water.
A former actor who appeared in movies corresponding to Canadian docudrama “The Terry Fox Story,” Clint Eastwood’s “Bird” and David Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch,” Zelniker extra not too long ago pivoted towards environmental storytelling as a result of, “There is something really powerful about visiting communities [impacted by ecological disasters] where the people’s voices have for too long been unheard,” he says.
Beneath, Zelniker speaks to Selection concerning the journey of “The Struggle for Mother Water” and the influence the sequence is beginning to make.
What’s subsequent after Taormina?
I might be going to Germany the place the GIZ — the German authorities company that oversees worldwide support — have invited me to the Bonn Local weather Change Convention after its senior members noticed “The Struggle for Mother Wwater” in Berlin. So now all of the worldwide coverage makers that convene in Bonn for the local weather convention might be on the screening. I’m going to talk, and one of many girls that I collaborated with on “The Struggle for Mother Water,” the Cameroon a part of the story, she might be with me. It is going to be a possibility, once more, to try to promote some change.
What have been another steps after Berlin by way of this piece making an influence?
World Water Day occurs yearly, and on the United Nations in New York Metropolis they’ve a giant occasion there sponsored by UN Water and UN Girls. They invited me there and performed a couple of minutes of the sequence. They’d me get up, and it was actually shifting. Really, I began crying slightly bit, as a result of, you understand, there’s this enormous worldwide delegation. I’m a child from Montreal who grew up watching hockey on a Saturday evening, so to be on the UN in one of many large convention rooms, having a couple of minutes of my documentary display screen in entrance of this worldwide delegation, and to see folks moved by the work that I’ve aggregated not directly – as a result of I don’t take duty for a way profoundly shifting these testimonies are, I’ve simply been accountable for gathering them collectively in a cohesive narrative. It was actually a special occasion. UN Water and UN Girls have now lined up a sequence of occasions by way of the remainder of the yr throughout which they’re going to use the documentary.
Are there different methods by which the sequence is beginning to serve the trigger?
One other approach by which the documentary may probably serve to affect policymakers is inside this division of the UN known as the United Nations College Institute for Water, Surroundings and Well being. They commissioned this girl at Northwestern College, her identify is Dr. Sarah Younger. She has assembled this factor known as Water InSecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales, designed to measure the human expertise of water insecurity. It’s a data-driven analysis mission, but it surely’s based mostly on testimony in a group. So it’s a sequence of questions the place they go into water stress communities and ask folks questions and based mostly on the info they collect, they’ve put collectively these scales. So she and her staff have been commissioned to place collectively these modules. She approached me and stated, “We don’t want to just present data, we want to be able to have some video that illustrates what we’re seeing in the data.” So clips from “The Struggle for Mother Water” are going to be sprinkled all through these modules which can be going for use internationally in international locations all around the world. Then I’m assembly with UNESCO in Paris after I end in Germany to see how we will collaborate utilizing the documentary to amplify these points to try to affect the a lot wanted change.
On high of that, after I walked away from these communities on the finish of the day of taking pictures, I requested myself, “What’s wrong with those of us who live in affluent countries that we’ve allowed some members of our human family to fall so far behind?” So I made a decision each greenback that involves me from the making of “The Struggle for Mother Water” will return to those communities. I fashioned this little charitable group known as The Mother Water Fund. We’ve already sponsored our first mission, a borehole [a narrow, vertical or horizontal hole drilled into the earth to extract natural resources such as water] within the village of Bende in Cameroon. It is a group that I visited, the place the scholars each Friday should trek about three kilometers down a extremely treacherous path. They’ve to gather water from a faucet in these 10-liter containers, trek it again to the varsity on their heads. And these are like 12-year-old ladies and boys. Each Friday, they should spend time gathering water in order that the varsity has water through the week, so there’s no studying time out there on Fridays. So the primary mission is to subsidize a borehole proper by the varsity.
How do you’re feeling about successful this award?
Effectively, you understand, the wonderful thing about successful awards is it supplies a possibility for individuals who is perhaps concerned about seeing the sequence. It would create a larger incentive or inspiration to look at the mission, and to put it up for sale for potential patrons. I keep in mind years in the past, I received a Genie Award, the Canadian Academy Award, for a film known as “The Terry Fox Story.” I used to be requested, “So, how do you feel?” I stated: “Well, I don’t feel like I’m a better actor because I won. I like to think that I wouldn’t feel like I was a worse actor because I lost.” The good factor is that you just get to have slightly little bit of a celebration and have some enjoyable. However greater than something, with a mission like this it’s validation for many who are on the entrance strains of this battle that their voices are being heard.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
