“Water Springs Fire”: A Film on the Fight Against Mega Basins and Privatization of Water in Deux-Sèvres

“Water springs fire” is a film by Fabien Mazzocco which will be released in theaters on May 31. It tells of the fight against the mega basins in Deux-Sèvres. A film close to the activists against the “privatization” of water.

How did a peaceful territory like the Marais poitevin become a place of confrontation and violence? This is the question that Fabrice Mazzocco asks himself in his latest film “From water springs fire” which hits theaters on May 31. How did we arrive at a water war and such a frontal opposition between two camps? Irrigating farmers on one side, opponents of mega-basins on the other. The clashes between some demonstrators and the police last March were particularly violent. Many demonstrators and police were injured. Two demonstrators were very seriously affected, one of them, Serge, is still not out of the woods.

Two camps that seem irreconcilable, especially since all climate specialists are announcing increasingly hot and drier summers. As one of the participants in the film bitterly summarizes:“ihere are 200 basins planned for Poitou-Charentes. And in the sector there, we already have 16. There is only one thing that will be missing, and that is water.”

Fabien Mazzocco knows the Marais Poitevin and Deux-Sèvres. His first stay in the region dates back to the years 2004/2006. He was then a student at IFFCAM, the French-speaking Institute for Animal Cinema Training in Ménigoutte.

He graduated thanks in particular to his study film “Thirst of the Marais”, devoted to the Marais Poitevin. From that time, he met Julien Le Guet, the current spokesperson for the collective “Bassines, non merci!”. And they notice together that agriculture uses abundantly the water of the Marais which suffers from it. Wetlands are shrinking.

A few years later, he returned to the Marais for two years, he shot a new film “for a few grains of gold” who denounces the intensive cultivation of corn around the Marais which dries out the land and consumes very large quantities of water.

In 2020, he definitely returns to Deux-Sèvres to live there and what he discovers frightens him:

When I came back, I hallucinated seeing the Marais, the collapse of biodiversity.

Fabien Mazzocco

Director

He then follows the movements to fight against mega-basins and intensive agriculture “There is an assumed point of view in this film. In such a divisive subject, we tend to classify the director in a camp. But I assume completely, I think that this subject of basins, it is madness“.

In this last film, Fabien Mazzoco returns to the fight against the basins and the clashes that accompany it “The debate smacks of identity debate, between farmers who would be right against neo-rurals, while this struggle has deep roots in the Marais poitevin. The population sees the Marais deteriorating”.

The film will be released in theaters on May 31, many preview screenings have already taken place in the region and all over France. A screening is scheduled in Poitiers on May 30 at Le Dietrich cinema at 8:30 p.m.

Trailer of the film by Fabien Mazzocco: “From water springs fire”