Alejo Di Risio is an Argentine film-maker whose work has focused on environmental issues. For his latest project, made with his colleague Franco Gonz\u00e1lez, he sought to portray an alternative face to one of South America\u2019s largest trade and export routes: the Paran\u00e1-Paraguay waterway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Waterway”, Di Risio explains, “is a name that people who live along the river don\u2019t use \u2013 it\u2019s the people on top of the ships, who don\u2019t see what they have below, who call it that”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flowing over more than 3,400 kilometres of the Paraguay, Paran\u00e1 and La Plata rivers, the waterway<\/a> crosses key regions for agriculture and food production in Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, facilitating trade between them and opening a route for exports to the wider world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When discussions of the giant waterway arise, it is common to hear how, each year, as many as 100 million tonnes<\/a> of goods pass along it, on their way to being exported. Receiving less attention, as Di Risio and Gonz\u00e1lez point out, are the social and environmental impacts the waterway has brought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2021, the two directors set out to travel along the Paran\u00e1 River to collect testimonies about the impacts of the waterway. Three years later, their documentary, By the River: The Dispute for the Paran\u00e1<\/a>, has been released, premiering in Argentina last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n