Documentary WATERMARK Wins Toronto Film Critics Association’s 2013 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award

WATERMARK, directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky, described as a mesmerizing portrait of the planet’s lifeblood, won the Toronto Film Critics Association’s 2013 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award. Also nominated for the award were Gabrielle, directed by Louise Archambault, and The Dirties, directed by Matt Johnson. The $100,000 value of the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award makes it by far the richest annual arts prize in Canada. As runners-up, Archambault and Johnson each received $5,000

Watermark is a feature documentary from multiple-award winning filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier, and renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky, marking their second collaboration after Manufactured Landscapes in 2006. The film brings together diverse stories from around the globe about our relationship with water: how we are drawn to it, what we learn from it, how we use it and the consequences of that use. We see massive floating abalone farms off China’s Fujian coast and the construction site of the biggest arch dam in the world – the Xiluodu, six times the size of the Hoover. We visit the barren desert delta where the mighty Colorado River no longer reaches the ocean, and the water-intensive leather tanneries of Dhaka.We witness how humans are drawn to water, from the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach to the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, where thirty million people gather for a sacred bath in the Ganges at the same time. We speak with scientists who drill ice cores two kilometers deep into the Greenland Ice Sheet, and explore the sublime pristine watershed of Northern British Columbia. Shot in stunning 5K ultra high-definition video and full of soaring aerial perspectives, this film shows water as a terraforming element, as well as the magnitude of our need and use. In Watermark, the viewer is immersed in a magnificent force of nature that we all too often take for granted- until it’s gone.