Acqua chit ven tells stories of landscapes, men and water. The Reggio Emilia Apennines, with its rivers, streams, lakes, waterfalls, its numerous springs, its mountains full of history, represents the ideal place from which to start to tell or, rather, to let water speak, a metaphor for the fluid but inseparable link between past and future. That living water that, with its incessant flow, shapes the landscape, unites distant communities, becomes an instrument of communication and transports stories and memories downstream.
Exploring the mountains surrounding the Secchia Valley, one encounters many narratives in which the destinies of water and men intertwine: a solitary dam warden, grappling with a load of tons of water to control and with the dreamlike suggestions of the landscape that surrounds him; the women of Casalino, who in 1928 rebelled against the militia to demand the construction of fountains and assert their right to water; the collective path of the Ventasso Consortium that independently manages the water resources of the area, channeling them into rural aqueducts from which pure water flows; the visit of a group of children to the sources of the Secchia, in a strange journey halfway between a school trip and an initiatory path of ascent to the origins; and still other children learning to do laundry with ashes, the old-fashioned way. Throughout the film, water flows and renews itself, an element of transmission of memory between generations.
... A symphony of fragments, discontinuous and beautiful, with some images capable of digging a niche in the memory until you never want to leave. Beyond the historical reconstructions and emotional knots, it had been a long time since I had seen a representation of water capable of restoring the living and unstable form of its ambiguous body, made up of reflections, almost a score of light and shadow. I have been thinking that water is also a mental fact since I saw "Rain" by Ivens, transmitting the sensation of it through images is, however, a task that requires an uncommon sensitivity... (Matteo Pernini, Ondacinema, about "Acqua chit ven – springs and currents of the Apennines)