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JOIN THE FIGHT: THE BEACH BELONGS TO YOU!

World premiere of PATRIMONIO, the new documentary of Emmy award winning documentary filmmakers Lisa F. Jackson and Sarah Teale at the 68. Berlin International Film Festival.

PATRIMONIO will premiere at the 68. Berlin International Film Festival in the 12th Culinary Cinema section. The filmmakers Lisa F. Jackson and Sarah Teale, as well as John Moreno, the brave Mexican lawyer who took on a life-changing cause, will be available for interviews.

The 12th Culinary Cinema will be held under the motto “Life Is Delicate” from February 18 to 23, 2018. Nine documentaries and a fictional film focusing on food, culture, and politics are being presented this year, and PATRIMONIO stands out for its ironic timeliness.

In a world where the President of the United States  - formerly a billionaire developer - insults and denigrates Latin America and its citizens, PATRIMONIO tells the story of a group of feisty Mexican fishermen who dare to stare down corporate America, refusing to bow to the corrupt whims of a multi-national Goliath and never blinking first. It is 2015 and a mega development is poised to engulf a small coastal community with a vast hotel/condo complex called Tres Santos. Marketed to wealthy Americans as “green” and “mindful” Tres Santos threatens to transform and overwhelm the idiosyncratic desert town of Todos Santos, quadrupling its population and causing irreversible damage: not only are the fishermen being forced off the beach they’re used for generations but the developers would also drain an already diminished aquifer, taking drinking water from a town where many residents have little or no access.

What are the rights of vulnerable communities in the face of global business interests and how can they defend their civil rights and their heritage?

For over three years Rosario Salvatierra, a leader of the Punta Lobos Fishermen’s Cooperative, has been asking this question, pushing the fishermen and the town to be skeptical, to stand up and be heard. He is supported by his 29 year-old daughter Maria and John Moreno, a charismatic local lawyer who takes on a life-changing cause.

PATRIMONIO is a story of inspired activism, a verite portrait of a community rallying to protect its resources, and its very identity, as these unlikely heroes take on a self-entitled giant - challenging their own government, denouncing corruption and demanding justice.

Lisa F. Jackson and Sarah Teale are Emmy award winning filmmakers who have been documenting this battle for almost 3 years. Teale has decades of family connections in Todos Santos and Jackson, who speaks fluent Spanish, left New York City to film and lives there full time. As a result PATRIMONIO has an intimate, insider’s view on this turbulent and emotional struggle for social justice and the efforts of one community to hold on to its patrimonio, its heritage.

PATRIMONIO was produced with the support of The Film Collaborative and International Documentary Association/Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund.

For further information please also visit:

http://www.patrimoniofilm.com

Press material:

https://www.berlinale.de/de/presse/filmstills/kulinarisches_kino