MEDIA ADVISORY
For Immediate Release
May 12, 2010

Maude Barlow to join launch of ‘Paani’ at Cannes Film Festival

The Water Wars are coming to Cannes. For the first time a major motion picture will deal directly with issues of water justice and scarcity, one of the most pressing issues of our time. Award-winning director Shekhar Kapur will team up with global water activist Maude Barlow, Swarovski Entertainment and Walkwater Media to present the concept of the film at the Cannes Film Festival this Friday.

‘Paani’ is the name of a film set in a water-scarce future, to be released in 2011. Shekhar Kapur, director of the award winning period films Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, is both writer and director of the film. Paani, which means water in Hindi, is being cast now and will start filming in the coming months, will be launched with a press announcement and cocktail brunch at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14.

Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow, because of her respected work on the issue, has been invited to present at the Cannes launch.

“Paani and Director Kapur have taken direct aim at the fundamental issue of our time. Water is a human right and Paani is a cautionary tale about what happens if power, privilege and profit are put before the right to water,” said Barlow. “Some already live in the world Paani presents, and we must demand action now in the fight for water justice, more so because the climate crisis impacts water so dramatically.”

The film will be produced by Oscar winner Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire). Oscar winner AR Rahman is composing the music, Jill Bilcock (Moulin Rouge) will be the film’s editor, and John Myhre (Chicago, Memoires of a Geisha) will be responsible for production design.

IMDb summarizes the plot as, “Thirty-five years into the future in a city of 20 million people, a war has begun in the quest for water known as the Water Wars between those that have water and those that do not.” It is set “at a time when water has become a weapon of social and economic control.”

In 2005, Kapur explained in his blog, “Paani means water in Hindi. I had just come down from a friend’s place in Pali Hill, one of the more expensive residential areas of Mumbai. My friend had me waiting for half an hour while he showered. He lived on the 30th floor, and the slum where there was no water was just below his apartment building. This inequity in the most basic resource necessary for human survival set me thinking and a story developed.”

In April 2010 he wrote, “Twelve years ago when I was trying to get funding for Paani, every one said that I was talking about a fantasy film, that no one would identify with the problem. Today they say I must make the film because it is so relevant.”

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For More Information: Dylan Penner, Council of Canadians, 613-795-8685, dpenner@canadians.org.