COMMITTEE TO SUPPORT THE FILM
*FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER*
SUED BY SUEZ BEFORE THE CRIMINAL CHAMBER
OF THE COURT OF PARIS

Our film FLOW: For Love Of Water* is an investigative documentary about the global water crisis and the increasingly perilous privatization of our global supply of drinking water.

For five years, traveling from the US to South Africa to India to Bolivia, FLOW director Irena Salina interviewed scientists, environmental activists, private companies and local citizens to ask one essential question: how do we protect and conserve water resources and assure access to clean drinking water for all in the years ahead?

FLOW world-premiered at the Sundance Festival; fulfilling our hopes of opening a public dialogue on our most critical natural resource. Today FLOW is shown at institutions, schools and companies all over the world as an educational tool, and is now screening globally for the US State Department as a freedom of expression initiative in countries as diverse as Myanmar, Turkey and Ecuador.

But now FLOW finds itself the subject of a French lawsuit brought by Suez, the largest water company in the world. Suez has undertaken this legal proceeding to suppress the screening of the film in France, to intimidate our distribution partners, to silence our efforts. FLOW has been pulled from French theaters, TV networks, film festivals and video outlets.

The privatization of our water networks, encouraged by the World Bank - particularly to the benefit of two French multinationals, VEOLIA and SUEZ, and a British one, RWE-THAMES WATER – is escalating the price of drinking water in the slums and villages of poor countries.

Water is now the world's third largest industry after oil and electricity; its rapid depletion will soon make it the most profitable resource on the planet. And yet, as ‘blue gold’ excites more and more corporate interest, the World Water Council, established to mediate the conflicting interests of states, corporations and citizens, is openly headed by representatives of VEOLIA and SUEZ. From the Philippines to Atlanta to Bolivia, the poor in peril have rarely been given the opportunity to tell their side of the story, to have their voices heard. FLOW empowered them to speak, finally allowing all sides of this global crisis to be heard. It is our strong opinion that FLOW should not be suppressed by anyone, least of all by those positioned to benefit from silencing the voices of the waterless poor, directly affected every day by business practices in service to shareholder value at the expense of human need.

Please join THE COMMITTEE TO SUPPORT THE FILM FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER, so that a real and transparent debate around the preservation and equitable distribution of water resources can take place, in compliance with the Adversarial Principle of the Court of Paris.

Thank you for your support,

Steven Starr, Producer, FLOW: For Love Of Water
forloveofwater@gmail.com