Drowned Land + Save Our Seas

• Duration: 86 minutes
• Director: Colleen Thurston
• Country: United States
• Year: 2025
• Rating: (15)

Flowing through southeast Oklahoma, the Kiamichi River is a cradle of biodiversity and cultural memory. Already twice dammed, it now faces another threat: a proposed hydropower project that could drain its watershed. For local residents and Indigenous culture-keepers of the Choctaw Nation, protecting the river is part of resisting a long history of land loss and forced displacement dating back to the Trail of Tears. 

Told with the river as its central character, the story traces its seasonal vitality, the injury from dams, and efforts to reclaim ecological balance. Woven throughout is the filmmaker's own family story - she reflects on her grandfather's work on the Army Corps of Engineers dams and her tribe's ongoing struggle against resource exploitation, seeking reconciliation between past and present. 

Save Our Seas is a locally cast short film highlighting the impacts of pollution on the environment and local communities in the South West of England.