Synopsis: ‘Two Kinds of Water’, explores the lives of a family living in the Guet Ndar fishing community on Senegal’s north coast – a country whose name literally means ‘our boat’. The 5,500km coastline of West Africa, is home to some of the most diverse and dangerous fishing grounds in the world. It provides a livelihood to eight million people as skills are handed down from generation to generation, yet climate change, over-fishing and contested waters are producing new and deadly threats every day. “Two Kinds of Water” charts the unbreakable bond between a fisherman and his wife as they face unbearable challenges, fighting to keep their young family afloat in one of Africa’s most vulnerable fishing communities. A combination of deeply poetic voices and lyrical journeys vividly render the lives of ocean communities on the frontline of the climate crisis and the fishermen whose lives lay on the line each time they leave the shore.
About the Filmmaker: Based in Barcelona Dan McDougall is an award-winning Scottish writer and documentary maker. Dan is a British Foreign Correspondent of the Year, an award he has also been nominated for three times. His most recent film for Guardian Documentaries was the Award wInning, Open Water, a vivid and poignant triptych narrative that won laurels at film festivals across the world and the best short film award at the Munich. Stockholm and Barcelona Film Festivals. The film converged the lives of three Greenlanders; a Hunter, a Ship’s Captain and a Fisherman. Individuals whose very existence and heritage are intertwined with the Arctic Ocean. Dan is the founder of the global content firm Miran and writes for both The Guardian and The Sunday Times of London Magazine on Human Rights issues. Dan is the former Sunday Times of London Africa Correspondent and New Delhi-based South Asia Correspondent for The Observer, as well as a BBC Panorama Presenter. He is a Media Leader at The World Economic Forum and a regular International Speaker on CSR and Human Rights. Dan has won four Amnesty International Awards for Outstanding Human Rights Journalism and is a Martha Gellhorn Prize Nominee for War Reporting. He was voted one of the world’s most influential people in the field of ethical trading by the US-based Ethisphere Institute. Dan is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Cambridge on Business and Human Rights and recently spoke at The United Nations in Geneva on the impact of corporate supply chains on the world’s poorest. As a film-maker and writer, Dan has reported overtly and covertly from over 125 countries including some of the most hostile environments in the world: Somalia, Yemen, Liberia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the DRC, Burma, Zimbabwe, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Sudan, The Sahel, Sri Lanka and The Palestinian West Bank.
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