We Belong to the Earth, by ALTERRATIVE, is a socio-environmental documentary film.
It tells the story of a journey to explore the construction of new worlds and it is dedicated to all the people who are committed to building new, more just, fairer and sustainable worlds, bravely, day after day.
The film is a hymn to hope and to the individual and collective strength that flourishes inside us, even when we do not expect it.
All the material used is original, made up of interviews in Spanish and English (but available with subtitles in 3 languages: Italian, Spanish and English), recorded during the round-the-world trip with more than 60 representatives of 33 social movements, unions, community organizations, cooperatives, social enterprises, local NGOs and research institutions. The film also includes recording from Stefano and Daniela’s travel adventure and the narration follows their journey from 23rd March to 6th December 2015, 10 months on the road from Italy, through north Africa, Spain and Portugal, then the American continent from the USA to Chile, visiting Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay. After a quick visit to French Polynesia they move to Asia where they travel through Thailand, Cambodia and India, coming back home after 266 days, after a short but intense, 2 weeks visit to South Africa.
The themes tackled by this collective and choral film are, first of all, the struggle for the land and the right of local communities to decide how to use it, resisting harmful projects such as mining extraction, airports, dams and other and large infrastructures. Huge development projects, often useless and imposed on communities by force, to which civil society is responding by proposing more sustainable and socio-environmentally acceptable alternatives.
Secondly, the struggle to defend water as a common good, resisting its privatization and commodification. Land and water, together with the seeds are at the base of agriculture so the film also documents the work of those opposed to conventional agriculture based on chemistry, monoculture and aimed at profit in favour of organic, diversified and sustainable agriculture mainly aimed at producing healthy and genuine food. A specific part is dedicated to the role of women in these struggles on land, water and agriculture, often women are the real protagonists in defending their rights, as well as those of their families and communities. Women are indeed, very often shining examples of strength and tenacity but also active promoters of economic, human and social development from below.
The film speaks to young people and adults alike, men and women, and wants to tell how any of us can change the surrounding reality, it doesn’t matter how complicated and difficult it may seem. Commitment and unity allow to face any type of problem and to look for different worlds where to build new realities, more sustainable and more harmonious, with joy and hope.
The final part is positive, bright, made up of all the messages of joy and hope gathered along the trip, the shy smiles, sweet words, deep, strong thoughts, expressed by normal people fighting personally and daily for values like peace, freedom, equality and justice, who have often paid, and still pay, a hard price for their choices.