Flow: For Love of Water

Directed by Irena Salina. Distributed by Oscilloscope Pictures. 1 hour, 24 mins.

No MPAA rating

(nothing objectionable). Playing at: area theaters.

Flow: For Love of Water, a lyrical and indicting testament to the importance of water and increasing attempts to privatize it, lucidly conveys a coming crisis and its grass-roots solution.

Traveling from India to South Africa to Bolivia to Michigan, filmmaker Irena Salina lays out the global problem: Huge corporations (Vivendi, Suez, Nestlé) have capitalized on a looming water shortage and, with the support of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, have forced poor farmers and urban dwellers to pay for "purified" water that often is anything but.

Heartbreaking and infuriating, Flow makes its case by way of persuasive witnesses, including authors, activists and even reformed former water barons who now make a universal, affordable, sustainable water supply their life's work. It sounds simple, but they're up against some of the most formidable corporate and government powers on Earth. Flow might have benefited from opposing voices, especially from the much-maligned World Bank, but the message is as clear as its subject matter should be: There's one more thing to worry about, and you just showered in it.

- By Ann Hornaday, Washington Post