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We Belong to the Earth

We Belong to the Earth, a socio-environmental documentary film, is the story of a journey to explore the construction of new worlds and it is dedicated to all the people who are committed to building new more just, fairer and sustainable worlds, bravely, day after day. The film is a hymn to hope and to the individual and collective strength that flourishes inside us, even when we do not expect it.
All the material used is original, made up of interviews in Spanish and English (but available with subtitles in 3 languages: Italian, Spanish and English), recorded during the round-the-world trip with more than 60 representatives of 33 social movements, unions, community organizations, cooperatives, social enterprises, local NGOs and research institutions. The film also includes recording from Stefano and Daniela’s travel adventure and the narration follows their journey from 23rd March to 6th December 2015, 10 months on the road from Italy, through north Africa, Spain and Portugal, then the American continent from the USA to Chile, visiting Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay. After a quick visit to French Polynesia they move to Asia where they travel through Thailand, Cambodia and India, coming back home after 266 days, after a short but intense, 2 weeks visit to South Africa.
The themes tackled by this collective and choral film are, first of all, the struggle for the land and the right of local communities to decide how to use it, resisting harmful projects such as mining extraction, airports, dams and other and large infrastructures. Huge development projects, often useless and imposed on communities by force, to which civil society is responding by proposing more sustainable and socio-environmentally acceptable alternatives.
Secondly, the struggle to defend water as a common good, resisting its privatization and commodification. Land and water, together with the seeds are at the base of agriculture so the film also documents the work of those opposed to conventional agriculture based on chemistry, monoculture and aimed at profit in favour of organic, diversified and sustainable agriculture mainly aimed at producing healthy and genuine food. A specific part is dedicated to the role of women in these struggles on land, water and agriculture, often women are the real protagonists in defending their rights, as well as those of their families and communities. Women are indeed, very often shining examples of strength and tenacity but also active promoters of economic, human and social development from below.
The film speaks to young people and adults alike, men and women, and wants to tell how any of us can change the surrounding reality, it doesn’t matter how complicated and difficult it may seem. Commitment and unity allow to face any type of problem and to look for different worlds where to build new realities, more sustainable and more harmonious, with joy and hope.
The final part is positive, bright, made up of all the messages of joy and hope gathered along the trip, the shy smiles, sweet words, deep, strong thoughts, expressed by normal people fighting personally and daily for values like peace, freedom, equality and justice, who have often paid, and still pay, a hard price for their choices.

  • Stefano Daniela Battain
    Director
  • Daniela Biocca
    Director
  • Stefano Battain
    Writer
  • Daniela Biocca
    Writer
  • Stefano Battain
    Producer
  • Daniela Biocca
    Producer
  • Stefano Battain
    Key Cast
  • Daniela Biocca
    Key Cast
  • Vanessa Raditz
    Key Cast
  • Felipe Alvarez Fernandez
    Key Cast
  • Esperanza Saavedra
    Key Cast
  • Filemon Rojas Ramos
    Key Cast
  • Andrea Spotti
    Key Cast
  • Silvia Mendoza
    Key Cast
  • Anita Cortez
    Key Cast
  • Feliciana Macario
    Key Cast
  • Fernando Funes Monzote
    Key Cast
  • Carmen Losano
    Key Cast
  • Diego Martinez
    Key Cast
  • Lauro Sigcha
    Key Cast
  • Oscar Olivera
    Key Cast
  • Pablo Galeano
    Key Cast
  • Sara Larrain
    Key Cast
  • Tomas Astorga
    Key Cast
  • Francisca Rodríguez Huerta
    Key Cast
  • Mafalda Galdames Castro
    Key Cast
  • Miriam Talavera Illanes
    Key Cast
  • Leviante Araki
    Key Cast
  • Anirban Chanda
    Key Cast
  • Jeff Goodchild
    Key Cast
  • Nandini Azad
    Key Cast
  • Jaya Arunachalam
    Key Cast
  • Mzamo Dlamini
    Key Cast
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Apparteniamo alla Terra
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Genres:
    travel, round the world trip, interviews, human rights, agroecology, permaculture, climate change, Land, water
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 54 minutes 51 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 1, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Argentina, Bolivia, Plurinational State of, Cambodia, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, French Polynesia, Guatemala, India, Italy
  • Language:
    English, Italian, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    various
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Stefano Daniela Battain, Daniela Biocca

Stefano Battain, also called “Teto”, is from Canale d’Agordo (Belluno), has a foot size of 46 and a wide, fast stride. He put one foot – sometimes also both feet – in more than one continent, first as student, later as volunteer and eventually as aid worker.
After taking his first steps in the “search for the other” first in South America and later in India, Stefano afterwards directs his path towards the University of Birmingham to study a master in poverty reduction and development management. This is just one of the stages that make him touch the African soil in Sierra Leone, Tanzania and South Sudan.
His experience in Africa starts as volunteer for the civil service and then as country representative in Tanzania, with the NGO CVM – Comunità Volontari per il Mondo, from 2008 to 2012, then he moves to South Sudan with the French NGO ACTED, managing agricultural projects oriented to food safety between 2012 and 2014.
Search and curiosity towards development and cooperation, its inconsistencies and possible alternatives, the social dynamics as result of government policies and choices, the birth of collective structural formations, drive Stefano to further considerations, analyzing the problems from a global point of view, pointing his nose towards new horizons, like a compass indicating the many worlds yet to discover and where to immerse his steps for the first time.
After living for one year and half in Jordan working with local communities and Syrian refugees, since September 2017 Stefano has been living with Daniela in London, where he currently works as Food Security and Livelihoods Advisor for War Child, a non-governmental organization for children assistance in war areas.
It is possible to read some stories about Stefano’s life in Africa in his blog Notas de Viaje; in addition he collaborates with the web-sites Anordestiche and Slowear Journal.

Daniela Biocca, also called “Bobiù”, from Grottammare (Ascoli Piceno), has a foot size of 39 and the mild yet determined step of those born among the green hills of the Marche region and the beaches of the Adriatic Sea.
With a degree in International Political Science, she studies in Bologna, Leuven (Belgium) and Perugia. Just graduated, in 2009, she starts a collaboration with the NGO C.V.M. – Comunità Volontari per il Mondo in Porto S. Giorgio (FM), again in the Marche. With the same organization she leaves for Tanzania in 2011 where she remains until 2014, first as volunteer for the civil service abroad and then as country representative, working alongside women, girls and children committing to the promotion of women’s rights and reinforcement of their condition especially through education and microcredit.
In February 2014, though, her heart takes her to South Sudan, where she reunites with Stefano. In Wau, in the state of the Western Bahr-el-Ghazal, she finds herself committed to the management of projects centered on sustainable agriculture, food safety and education for the NGO “Mani Tese”.
After 4 years in Africa and in the field of NGOs she decides to set off to discover how activists who imagine another role for women in families and contemporary society live and fight. After living in Amman, Jordan, for one year and half working for the communities and the women from north Jordan, in September 2017 she moves with Stefano to London, where she is currently attending a master at the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) University of London in Labour, Social Movements and Development.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

In 2015 for a year, a few months after our wedding, we decided to leave everything aside and leave with our backpacks, like Daniela and Stefano. We named our initiative: ALTERRATIVE, the name was chosen in a muggy and dusty Sunday afternoon in South Sudan, while, with our cat "Pippi", we were planning around the world: 266 days, in 20 countries on 5 continents. So, in March 2015 we left Italy for Tunis, our first stop. There followed many more stops and during these months we have recorded a lot, with the phone, with the photo camera and with our small video camera but especially, we recorded feelings, smiles, words, fragrances and colours with our heart.
We have also documented what we have seen with our camera, but above all with our eyes and curious minds. We met many people who face problems such as land grabbing, water privatization, mining extraction and harmful agricultural policies. We listened to them and wrote what they told us and what excited us, unpretentious, on our blog.
Back from the trip, we had hundreds of hours of interviews and travel footage, thousands of photos but above all lots of new ideas, experiences and stories about how each of us can change the surrounding reality, no matter how complicated and difficult it may seem. Commitment and unity allow us to face any kind of problem and to build new, more sustainable and more harmonious realities, with joy and hope and we wanted to find a direct way to share all this with as many people as possible.
We thought about it a lot and considering the situation we agreed that the best solution was to try to put everything we had recorded, documented, listened to, seen and experienced in a documentary film. With hard work and a lot of humility, in 2017 we found those who believed in our idea and helped us with the editing, OZ Film of Bari, and after months of work, email and Skype calls now the film is ready: "WE BELONG TO THE EARTH", a hymn to hope, but also to the individual and collective strength that flourishes within us, when we least expect it.
The project is not finished yet though. A new phase has begun. A phase in which we carry around our documentary around Italy and who knows, the world, we want to meet committed and passionate people, curious to talk and discuss about the topics covered in the documentary. A new opportunity for us to learn new "alterrative", share our thoughts and keep asking ourselves: what are the solutions? What can we do? How? We strongly believe in the meeting and exchange of ideas, we hope to share the documentary with more and more people, with the hope that the message and the strength of the protagonists can find a place in the hearts of people as they found it in ours.