Water Stories
A collaboration with
Brave Blue World Foundation and the World Water Film Festival that empowers right relation with water.
This project seeks to build your understanding of water as relationship through eight short documentary-style community stories from the Our Blue World: A Water Odyssey documentary film. It guides you from observation to creation, as you trace how water moves through place and begin to document your own relationship to water.
What are Water Stories?
Water Stories begins from a simple but often overlooked truth: relationship requires introduction. To come into right relation with water, we must first know it—not as an abstract resource, but as a living system we are already part of. Water moves through our bodies, our communities, and the landscapes we inhabit, yet many of us do not know where it comes from, where it goes, or how it is held in the systems around us. Covering over 70% of the Earth’s surface, water shapes climate, ecosystems, and cultural life, but in many highly developed contexts it has been rendered invisible—delivered through pipes, managed through infrastructure, and separated from the larger cycles it sustains. Water Stories is an invitation to reintroduce ourselves. Through these narratives, we begin to build kinship with the waters we encounter daily—tracing their origins, understanding their movement, and recognizing the ecological and cultural systems they support. In doing so, we shift from passive consumption to active relationship, opening space for reciprocity, responsibility, and learning.
Who are Water Stories partners?
Water Stories is developed in collaboration with the Brave Blue World Foundation and the World Water Film Festival — organizations using film, storytelling, and public engagement to expand how societies understand water and ecological futures. Through these partnerships, Water Stories features eight voices drawn from a global network of filmmakers, scientists, innovators, artists, and community leaders, each offering a distinct perspective on how water is understood, protected, and reimagined across contexts. The project also includes a collaborative call for students and participants to submit short films documenting their own relationships with water, with selected works featured through World Water Film Festival screening events. Together, these collaborations expand the narrative of water beyond crisis — toward relationship, reciprocity, connection, and the reweaving of human and ecological futures.
Documenting
Living Water Stories
As you watch the following Water Stories from around the world, notice how people relate to water in different places. Pay attention to what is visible, what is hidden, and the relationships connecting water to community, culture, land, living systems, and everyday life.
Each story begins in a particular place but can reveal larger questions of well-being, livelihoods, ecological balance, shared responsibility, governance, and how communities adapt and imagine their water futures.
From Water Stories to Global Relationships
These same relationships are part of larger conversations taking place around the world, including the six areas of dialogue guiding the 2026 UN Water Conference. Water Stories approaches these questions through a different lens: beginning with place, lived experience, community knowledge, and our relationships with water.
As you move through these stories and begin your own, consider how a story rooted in one place might connect to well-being, livelihoods, living systems, solidarity, governance, and water futures.
The step-by-step guide below will help you follow these relationships and shape what you discover into your own Water Story.
Water Stories
Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Lima, Peru
Wuhon, China
Wuhon, China
Mississippi, USA
Ruziba, Burundi
Aotearoa, New Zealand
Quebec, Canada
Bundorragha, Ireland
Water Stories
When you look closely at the water in your own life, what story does it tell—and how can you share that story through film?
01
FIND YOUR WATER STORY
Begin by choosing a way to explore water in your everyday life. This might be: • A river, lake, ocean, or stream near you • The water that comes into your home • Rain, flooding, drought, or seasonal change • A place where water is missing, hidden, or difficult to access • A story your family or community holds about water You do not need to start with a strong connection. You may discover that your relationship to water feels distant or unclear. That is part of the story. Start by asking: • Where does my water come from? • Where does it go after I use it? • Who or what depends on this water? • What don’t I know about it? Pay attention to both what is visible and what is hidden. Your project begins with noticing.
02
OBSERVE & DOCUMENT
Once you’ve chosen your focus, begin documenting what you see and learn. You might: • Film a body of water over time • Record the movement of water through your neighborhood or home • Interview someone in your community • Capture sounds, textures, reflections, or changes • Follow water infrastructure—pipes, drains, reservoirs, treatment systems You can also research: • Local history of water in your area • Environmental challenges or changes • Cultural or community relationships to water As you document, ask: • What patterns do I notice? • What surprised me? • What feels connected? What feels disconnected? You are not trying to “solve” anything. You are learning how to see and listen.
03
SHAPE YOUR STORY
Now begin turning what you’ve gathered into a story.
Your documentary might explore:
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A connection to water
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A lack of connection to water
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A question you are still trying to understand
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A hidden system most people don’t see
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A relationship between water and community, culture, or environment
Think about:
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What do I want people to notice?
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What question am I asking through this film?
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What feeling or perspective do I want to share?
There is no single way to tell your story. Your voice, your perspective, and your curiosity are what matter most.
04
EXPLORE THE RELATIONSHIPS
What does your story reveal?
Now that you have begun to shape your story, consider what it reveals about our relationships with water. Your story may speak to one or several of these larger questions:
Water & Wellbeing
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How does water shape the health, dignity, and everyday lives of people and communities?
Water & Livelihoods
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How does water sustain food, livelihoods, and the ways communities live and thrive?
Water & Living Systems
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How does water connect climate, biodiversity, land, and other forms of life?
Water & Solidarity
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How does caring for and sharing water ask us to work across communities and boundaries?
Water & Governance
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How do we make decisions about water, and whose knowledge and voices are part of those decisions?
Water & Futures
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What knowledge, TEKnologies, practices, and resources can help us adapt and build more resilient water futures?
Your story does not have to answer every question. Follow the relationships your story reveals and consider how a story rooted in one place can speak to a much larger water future.
05
CREATE YOUR FILM
Using your footage, create a short documentary that shares your water story.
Your film can include:
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Video footage
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Voiceover or narration
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Interviews
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Text on screen
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Sound recordings or music
It can be simple or complex—but it should be intentional.
As you finalize your film, reflect:
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What did I learn about water?
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What did I learn about my community?
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What did I learn about my own relationship to water?
This is not just a film—it is an introduction. A way of beginning a relationship.
06
SHARE & CONTRIBUTE
Your documentary becomes part of a larger collection of Water Stories from around the world.
By sharing your film, you are contributing to a global understanding of how people relate to water—across geographies, cultures, and lived experiences.
Together, these stories begin to reveal:
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Patterns of connection and disconnection
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Systems that shape how water is accessed and understood
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New ways of seeing water as a living system, not just a resource
Your story matters because it adds to a collective reimagining of our relationship to water.
