Watermark

The documentary follows water: the concrete of a vast dam in China, flooding in Bangladesh, a dried-out river bed in California, a religious bathing in India where millions gather. There is no narrator and no lecture. The images are often shot from above, and the human being is left tiny inside that scale. The photographer Edward Burtynsky and the director Jennifer Baichwal made the film together; Baichwal had earlier made Manufactured Landscapes, which took Burtynsky as its subject. The Canadian documentary was shot in ten countries and was named documentary of the year at home. Burtynsky's photographic manner carries straight into the cinema: under an image that looks beautiful there is always destruction.