LAFF Agua es Vida

Saturday, August 2, 2025
5PM – 12 AM


Schedule:

5PM Screening of “Agua es Vida” (Water For Life)

Live music by:
7PM I Mehrnam Rastegari
10PM I Guachinangos


Terraza 7
40-19 Gleane St
Elmhurst, NY 11373


*Please note this event is
NOT HELD AT THE BDC.

This event is held in conjunction with the BDC’s 8th Annual Latin American Foto Festival.

Join us at Terraza 7 for the reception of the 8th Annual Latin American Foto Festival, hosted by the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC). Work by photographer Gabriela Oraa will be on view.

We’re excited to return to Terraza 7 for the second year in a row as part of this year’s expanded festival. Come celebrate powerful photography from across Latin America.

Work by Gabriella Oraa will be on view.

A screening of Water For Life will take place at the opening. The film explores the collision of water rights, Indigenous beliefs, and resource extraction through the lives of three Latin American community leaders. The right to clean water is a global issue—in Latin America it has become a matter of life and death.

Narrated by Mexican actor Diego Luna with the original song Ko (Water) sung by Grammy Award-winning Mexican Mixtec singer Lila Downs and Chilean Mapuche singer-songwriter Daniela Millaleo.

Water For Life tells the story of three extraordinary individuals: Berta Cáceres, a leader of the Lenca people in Honduras; Francisco Pineda, a subsistence farmer in El Salvador; and Alberto Curamil, an Indigenous Mapuche leader in Chile, all of whom refused to let government supported industry and transnational corporations take their water and redirect it to mining, hydroelectric projects or large scale agriculture. Despite reassurances from companies and the authorities, they knew what lay ahead: contaminated water, environmental devastation, and the destruction of their communities.

It is a story of courage and determination, betrayal and corruption, death threats and murder, and of unexpected victories in the countryside and in the courts. It is a story that asks how economic development can grow in harmony with environmental protections. Above all, Water For Life illuminates a growing recognition of Indigenous rights and a rising demand for corporate responsibility and environmental justice that’s being seen around the world. It is a story that begins and ends with water.