Event Overview
At a time when the world feels overwhelmed by overlapping crises, where do we find the hope to keep fighting? We find it in the people living in the solutions.
Join the World Water Film Festival on Monday, May 4, for “Go with the Flow: Where the Water Grows,” an immersive, free Chicago Water Week event produced by the World Water Film Festival hosted by Emmanuel Pratt at the visionary Sweet Water Foundation. This is not just another film screening and panel discussion about the problems of water contamination – it is a celebration of the communities, advocates, and storytellers who are forcing change and healing the earth and communities.
With powerful storytelling through a series of short documentary and experimental films, and one feature, How to Poison a Planet, this is a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet powerful voices in global water advocacy today including:
Meet Mohamed Salem Mohamed Ali, a 2024 honoree of The World Around Young Climate Prize, who is traveling to Chicago from the Smara refugee camp in Algeria. Mohamed will share the extraordinary story of his water-recycling desert garden — proving that the most innovative climate solutions are emerging from communities forced by necessity to find a way.
Be inspired by Emmanuel Pratt, an urban designer creating a model of resident-driven community development in neighborhoods that have suffered the effects of long-term disinvestment. Pratt is co-founder and executive director of the Sweet Water Foundation (SWF), a nonprofit organization based on Chicago’s South Side that engages local residents in the cultivation and regeneration of social, environmental, and economic resources in their neighborhoods.
Hear from Michael and Nora Strande, the tireless parent and daughter advocates who, alongside their late daughter and sister Amara, fought the chemical giants to pass “Amara’s Law” in Minnesota — one of the strictest bans on “forever chemicals” (PFAS) in the nation. The Strandes carry Amara’s powerful legacy forward, offering a deeply emotional and inspiring call to action to demand a cleaner, safer future.
Nels Lindquist is the Visual Storytelling Manager with the Wisconsin Conservation Voters. Learn how this organization is engaging voters to protect Wisconsin’s environment.
World Water Film Festival Founder Robert Strand will guide you through the program and share plans on how WWFF will be participating at the 2026 UN Water Conference this December in the UAE – leveraging the power of storytelling and film to help reach the UN Strategic Development Goals.
Through a curated lineup of award-winning documentary and experimental films, including the internationally acclaimed feature How to Poison a Planet, we will explore how storytelling – from UN Water’s ‘International Groundwater Resource Assessment Center’ animations and experimental 16mm art to investigative journalism – drives awareness and changes policy to inspire action.
Between the screenings, step outside the theater for a guided walking tour of the Sweet Water Foundation’s Common|Wealth campus to see regenerative urban ecology in action.
Come for the films. Stay for the tour. Leave inspired by the people who are turning the tide.
Hosts: World Water Film Festival & Sweet Water Foundation
Location
Sweet Water Foundation (The Common|Wealth Campus), 5749 S. Perry Avenue, Chicago, IL 60621
Date and Time
Monday May 4, from 11am to 4pm, Networking starting at 10am
Cost
Free with registration
Event Type
Film Screening with Panels on Agriculture, Plant Based Solutions and PFAS
