Was das Wasser erzählt – Films

Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo
Switzerland | 2026 | 75 min
World premiere
Languages : Tigrinya, Japanese
Subtitles : English, French

If water could speak and we could understand it, we would hear how absurd it finds the categorisations of living things created by human science, the lack of respect for the territory of others, the desire to colonise... In Zurich, a city undergoing rapid urbanisation, a woman hears its voice inviting us to change our perspective on the world.

“I am the heron”. In a monologue, a woman’s voice recounts the truths she overhears while listening near a stream. Through the language of birds, Was das Wasser erzählt explores the water cycle – raging torrents, mist, ice and bubbling streams. The film is the fruit of a transdisciplinary artistic project related to the transformation of the Wohnsiedlung collective housing neighbourhood in Zurich-Seebach. The meeting of the construction site for this new neighbourhood and the adjoining forest stream relegates humans to the background. This shift in focus invites a reflection on humanity’s colonisation of natural areas over the ages, polluting waters, warming glaciers and imposing an arbitrary classification of life on flora and fauna. The alliteration of the title sets the poetic tone for a song that fully listens to the voice and rhythm of nature, taking the form of a fable about a man who saw himself as more important than the heron.

Raphaëlle Pireyre

Was das Wasser erzählt, 2026
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Sudeuropa, 2005