Synopsis
On March 2, 2016, Lenca environmental activist Berta Cáceres was murdered. She was shot at close range after denouncing those who wanted to see her dead. In the world’s most dangerous country for environmentalists, tenacious Honduran journalist Milton Benítez follows the clues he and Berta noted at a meeting held the day before her murder. With the help of Almudena Bernabeu, a renowned international lawyer, the jigsaw is pieced together. Behind the crime, collusion between companies and civil servants creates a deadly pattern. Who killed Berta?
A word from Tënk
This kind of documentary leaves me speechless. Unfortunately, we are far from fiction. We are in a place of great violence and nameless tragedy. I call these life stories "double dramas": we witness both the destruction of the environment by this unbridled capitalism with its devastating modus operandi through agrobusiness, logging and mining, and the destruction of human life defending the river, the mountain and the forest. These people are being killed because they are protecting life, water, land and trees. They are defending this river because there is no reason not to defend it.
Berta Cáceres was killed because she wanted to protect life. One victim among many. In 2022, 60 ecologists were murdered in Colombia, 34 in Brazil, 31 in Mexico, 4 in Venezuela and 14 in Honduras (source: Reporterre).
The title of this film is an invitation to embody this reality, to equip ourselves with the same courage that the director of this film had to assume, and to accompany these fighters who risk their lives. And who lose it. I am the river. I am Berta.
Sylvie Lapointe
Filmmaker
