Drowned Out (2002)

An Indian family decide to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada dam Three choices. Move to the slums in the city, accept a place at a resettlement site or stay at ... See full summary »

Director:

Franny Armstrong

Stars:

Arundhati Roy, Bulgi Sonkaria, Luhariya Sonkaria

1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Arundhati Roy	...	Herself
Bulgi Sonkaria	...	Herself
Luhariya Sonkaria	...	Himself

Storyline

An Indian family decide to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada dam Three choices. Move to the slums in the city, accept a place at a resettlement site or stay at home and drown. The people of Jalsindhi in central India must make a decision fast. In the next few weeks, their village will disappear underwater as the giant Narmada Dam fills. Bestselling author Arundhati Roy joins the fight against the dam and asks the difficult questions. Will the water go to poor farmers or to rich industrialists? What happened to the 16 million people displaced by fifty years of dam building? Why should I care? Drowned Out follows the Jalsindhi 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...

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Plot Keywords:

dam | narmada dam | police brutality | india | drowned | 

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Taglines:

An Indian family choose to stay at home and drown rather than make way for the Narmada Dam.

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Genres:

Documentary

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Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English Gujarati Hindi

Release Date:

28 August 2002 (UK)

Also Known As:

The Damned

Filming Locations:

Delhi, India

Box Office

Budget:

£35,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Spanner Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

45 min (PBS)

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

User Reviews

Strong political/ecological documentary.

Very good, if not quite great, this documentary about poor villagers being cruelly displaced by a massive dam project in India has some emotional and powerful moments.

There's no pretense of objectivity here – this is a film with a point of view, and it expresses it strongly.

The weak spots are a certain sense of repetition, and a back of the mind feeling that good and bad might be a bit more complex than shown here – we're asked to take some of the film's assertions on face value, without question or rebuttal.

None-the-less, a moving and sadly inspiring film.