Marsyangdi Wile Ri’iba: May you live as long as the river

Marsyangdi Wile Ri’iba: May you live as long as the river explores the tension between explores the tension between ancestral wisdom, the agency the agency of invisible guardians of the land, and the relentless force of ‘progress’ in Nepal’s hydropower economy. It draws on research about the construction of the 220kv Marsyangdi Corridor transmission line by the government and financed by a loan of the European Investment Bank (EIB), located in Lamjung and Manang district of Northern Nepal. The film follows one of the Indigenous communities whose sacred site must be moved to make way for an electricity substation. Downstream, a women’s group resist the transmission lines from being brought through their community forest. Through rituals, the community consults the female guardians of the land, who say no to the destruction. But the contractors push ahead, and now the community worries about how the living land will respond. Will people get sick and die? Will harvests fail? Will their resistance hold? Fear and insecurity plague the locals as they search to find a new sacred site approved by these invisible guardians.