SG - I Am the River, the River Is Me

About movie: I Am the River, the River Is Me

In 2017 the Whanganui River in Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) became the world's first river to be granted the same legal rights and responsibilities as a person. This was the outcome of a legal battle pursued for more than 150 years by the Maori, who regard this river as their ancestor, as a living and indivisible being from source to sea. We see Ned Tapa, the river's Maori guardian, take international water representatives, activists and the filmmakers on a canoe trip along this sacred waterway. This documentary is not only a journey through a breathtaking landscape, it is an appeal to revise our value systems relating to nature and community, in the interests of all future life on our planet.

About series Rethinking Human-Nature Relationships

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the role and agency of non-human actors, including other beings, ecosystems and landscapes. Initiatives that advocate for a more-than-human perspective gain traction, embracing post-anthropocentric thinking, as well as concepts like non-human rights and multispecies justice. These efforts challenge traditional views of nature and aim to empower non-human natural entities, such as farmed animals, coral reefs, and rivers.

In this series, we’ll explore this paradigm shift and how it invites us to rethink humanity’s place in the natural world. What explains the rising attention for the ‘more-than-human’, and what does it mean to empower non-human nature in practice? We’ll look at real initiatives that strive to better represent non-humans. To what extent do they contribute to meaningful change and what can we learn from them?