film, 57 min

The river is a woman. And she has the face of women from the nationwide collective working to save natural watercourses. These environmental campaigners – the River Sisters – protest against river regulation and concrete embankments which lead to the destruction of entire ecosystems. They organize floating happenings on rivers, presenting ‘pro-river’ slogans on self-made swimming suits and sending their message to both viewers and the media. The River Sisters raise social awareness, making us realize just how precious the Vistula, Nida, Dunajec or Tarnawka are.
Cecylia Malik, founder of the River Sisters, urges women to give their voice to rivers and join environmentalists from Save the Rivers Coalition in their fight against politicians, officials and the hydrotechnical lobby. This is a struggle for free wildlife, pristine landscapes and pure fresh water, which is already turning into the planet’s most valuable resource.

Currently the film is available for free on the VOD Green Festival platform.

Written and directed by: Cecylia Malik
Editing, script cooperation: Rafał Małecki
Sound: Krzysztof Ridan
Colour correction: Michał Żołnowski
Cinematography: Piotr Dziurdzia, Cecylia Malik, Magdalena Mosiewicz, Joanna Urbaniec, Tomasz
Gotfryd, Stanisław Barański, Bartolomeo Koczenasz.
Music: Sutari (from the album Siostry Rzeki i Michał Zygmunt)
Dance: Ula Dziurdzia
Production: Cecylia Malik

Cecylia Malik (born 1975) is a visual artist, performer, painter and activist. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (Faculty of Painting/Leszek Misiak’s studio) and completed post-graduate curatorial studies at the Jagiellonian University. Malik cofounded the Squirrel CCA, a newly established art institution, as well as a number of other initiatives within the Kraków art scene. She acts locally, engaging art in her activist and environmentalist practice. Her projects, based on a broad cooperation with activists and specialists in the given field, provide protests with a visual language. By defending rivers, lakes and trees, disseminating knowledge on what is closest to us and involving historians, architects and environmentalists, Malik gives her art an extraordinary degree of agency. In 2018, she won the Katarzyna Kobro Award. She lives in Kraków.