Drowned Out

Plot Summary

Shot over three years by renowned documentary director Franny Armstrong (The Age of Stupid, McLibel), Drowned Out tells the true story of an Indian family who decide to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada Dam. With just a few weeks until the village disappears underwater, bestselling author Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) joins the family's fight against the dam. She asks the difficult questions. Will the water go to poor farmers or to rich industrialists? Why are children dying in the resettlement sites? What happened to the 16 million people displaced by fifty years of dam building? Why should we care? Drowned Out follows the villagers through hunger strikes, rallies, police brutality and a six year Supreme Court case. It stays with them as the dam fills and the river starts to rise. According to the Royal Gazette newspaper in Bermuda, ""Documentaries rarely, if ever, come better than this"". Film Journal International called it ""a real eye opener"" and the San Francisco Film Festival said that it is ""a film of enormous heart, grit and insight, that is both taut political essay and enormously moving plea."" The film's producers estimate that Drowned Out has so far been seen by more than 14 million people worldwide.