Voices of struggle echo from deep in the great canyon of the Marañón. Two mega-dams would flood villages, unique forests and as yet unstudied cave paintings. For years, communities and activist groups have been organizing to ensure that the waters of the Marañon River continue to flow free. What would be the consequences of interrupting millions of years of connection between the Andes and the Amazon?
"The Roar of the Marañon" seeks to answer this question through images recorded during more than 6 years of travels on the Marañon River and its surrounding communities. The voices of local populations, specialists and activists guide this documentary and reveal the need to protect the river from possible mega-dam projects.
Directed by Dana Bonilla and Bruno Monteferri, with the joint production of Conservamos por Naturaleza of the Peruvian Society of Environmental Law and Marañón Waterkeeper, "The Roar of the Marañón" will be premiered at the World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in Marseille (France), this Thursday, September 9, during a press conference.
"The future of a thousand people whose homes would be flooded and the populations of hundreds of endemic species living in these forests are at stake. In addition, the impacts of interrupting the connection between the Andes and the Amazon, blocking the flow of sediment and fish migration would be felt along the Marañon River and in the Amazon River, affecting hundreds of indigenous and riparian communities," says Bruno Monteferri, a Peruvian environmental lawyer who will be part of the presentation at the event that brings together the entire nature conservation community from around the world.
"The Roar of the Marañón" will be available in Spanish and English through the platform www.elekran.com and can be viewed from September 9 to 19 of the same month completely free of charge. In addition, as part of the local dissemination actions, a version dubbed into Awajún is being worked on for exhibition in the communities.
