“Untitled” WATER DOCUMENTARY

Cactus’ new feature documentary.

2 time Oscar nominated director Rebecca Cammisa’s  and Cactus Film have joined forces to produce a documentary about the incredible story of water and water management in the worlds biggest city.

This feature documentary is an environmental case study of Mexico City as it struggles to save itself. 

Mexico City, all 1,485 kilometers of it, is in a giant basin. The city was built not near, but in the middle of an ancient series of lakes. Some of these lakes were naturally fresh water, some naturally salinated. Since ancient times, large amounts of water continually flowed down through the ring of mountains, into the city, seasonally flooding it. All the natural lakes gradually dried up after the Spanish Conquest of 1521. From that year on, the Spaniards fought against nature and built drainage systems to handle all the massive flooding problems. For the last 60 years of Mexico City’s ‘modern age,’ the same approach has been used by engineers and water managers: import fresh water, then drain it.

Most Mexicans do not know the life cycle of their water, from opening their taps to once it flushes away. We will visualize this for audiences by tracking the “Life of Water” from where it is extracted and then travels 158 km into the city. Once that water is used and disposed of, it then travels another 520 km, where it ends up in the Gulf of Mexico.  Once viewers see the sheer scale of distances we hope they will value and conserve their water more. 

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