Customer Reviews

Drowned Out

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4 star:		(1)
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Title: Drowned Out (2002)
Starring: Nina Wadia
Director: Franny Armstrong
Format: DVD
Review By: Diana Rohini LaVigne, Indian Life & Style Magazine

The scary reality of Indians living in the path of progression is brought to life by the expert talents of director Franny Armstrong. Rather than leave their home which is slated for destruction to make room for the newly created Narmada dam, they decide to stay and face being drowned by the rising waters. The filmmakers produce a well-balanced look at the dilemma and explore the difficult challenges faced by the region which includes police brutality, hunger strikes and an ongoing court case about this situation. As the river water rises, film viewers take a look at the horrific situation emerging day by day.

Drowned Out is a valuable film for understanding the down side to India's ever-growing obsession with dam building and brings up the finer reasons that dams are not only a solution, but also dams are a major problem.
Drowned Out encourages viewers to take another look at the human side of dam building.

It was visually powerful and a compassionate look at those who suffer the most at the hands of the industrialization of the area. It is a film worth seeing many times!

I have read a considerable amount about the flooding of villages and farms in India for Hydropower Dams, but this documentary film was an unbelievably intimate experience with the people going through deciding whether or to re-locate or to stay on their lands as the waters rose. It is informative, moving - but not entertaining. I'd recommend it highly to anyone who cares to bear witness to lives we would otherwise never know of.

Very good, if not quite great, this documentary about poor villagers being cruelly displaced
by a massive dam project in India has some emotional and powerful moments.

There's no pretense of objectivity here - this is a film with a point of view, and it expresses
it strongly.

The weak spots are a certain sense of repetition, and a back of the mind feeling that good
and bad might be a bit more complex than shown here - we're asked to take some of the film's
key assertions on face value, without question or rebuttal.

None-the-less, a moving and sadly inspiring film.

A powerful movie that I further reviewed on my blog at [...] For anyone concerned about water scarcity or social and environmental injustices, the plight of these people takes the cake. I also recommended this for use in a graduate school class while learning about the same topic. An easy to understand video that even my daughter, who is middle school, is watching, for a project.