Doxumentale 25

Vivian Schröder, Impact Director and co-founder of Dokumentale (Berlin), talks to BDE about the event’s second edition, running June 12 to 22. “We are celebrating humanity,” she says of her festival ethos. “We come together in a space as humans and we listen to each other and sometimes we need to become uncomfortable in uncomfortable conversations. These are the times that demand it, and we want to have a space for multiple perspectives and dialogue.”

To avoid a potential legal dispute, the Berlin-based festival Dokumentale announced during its opening that it will forthwith drop the ‘k’ and go instead by the name of Doxumentale. “Doxumentale is a declaration of love - for our former name, for documentary media, and for the power of constructive collaboration,'”explained festival directors Vivian Schröder and Anna Ramskogler-Witt.

In The Age of Water, brother and sister Isabel & Alfredo Alcántara tell a story with true global resonance, how the over-extraction of groundwater to boost agricultural yields can disturb previously contained toxic chemicals, leading to the contamination of drinking water. This is what happened in the Mexican town of La Cantera, where three infants died of leukaemia, the result of lethal radioactive toxins in the water. But six local women decided to fight back… Co-director Isabel Alcántara discusses her urgent new film with BDE.