Flows: Chinese Garden

Shot over the course of five months in and around Tulum, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, Flows leads viewers on a journey never before taken.

  • Director: Klaus Thymann
  • Music: Thom Yorke

Shot over the course of five months in and around Tulum, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, Flows is a 52-minute documentary directed by Klaus Thymann and featuring music by Radiohead's Thom Yorke. The film leads viewers on a journey never before taken, exploring the aquifer beneath the Yucatan Peninsula and investigating the links between a number of beautiful and unique aquatic environments.

Through land, air and sea, Thymann takes us down over a kilometre into a submerged cave system. In the clip below we see an incredible reflective mirage, where salt and freshwater meet, unmixed, resembling an ethereal divide. Whilst candid and visually stunning, Flows challenges the concept of the ecosystem, considering water as one sole, unified entity and underlining the importance of saving, and protecting, all bodies of water.

A clip from the documentary Flows, by director Klaus Thymann.
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“Flows actually came from a feature I did for The Guardian, where I was joining the dots so to say, showing the connections between the various so-called ecosystems on the Yucatan Peninsula. This brought the idea about to talk of water as one unity and not separate units,” says Thymann. “The fact that there are very big Marine Protected Areas being announced is great, but, in my view, we need to include the inland underground rivers, too. This is what Flows is about.”

Flows premieres on 16 May 2018.

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