Latest news with #CapturingWater
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
SXSW Doc ‘Shuffle' Reveals How Rehab Facilties Prey on Addicts for the Sake of Profit
Benjamin Flaherty spent three years shooting 'Shuffle,' a documentary that follows three addicts who are trying to stay alive in rehab facilities that are scamming insurance companies. Flaherty reveals that patients are being bought and sold for their insurance policies and ushered into a cycle of care designed to keep them sick. With the help of an FBI informant, an insurance analyst, and the former executive director of a Philadelphia-based treatment facility, the director uncovers collusion at the highest levels of government. Flaherty, who uses his personal journey of recovery from addiction as a way into the 82-minute doc, unravels a web of public policy and private interest preying on a desperate population for the sake of profit. More from Variety 'Ash' Review: New Planet, Same Old Threats in Flying Lotus' Hollow-Core, Flashy-Looking 'Alien' Remix 'Capturing Water' Spotlights South Africa's Grassroots Fight to Preserve Precious Resource Before It Runs Out Most Americans Have Negative View of Elon Musk: Poll 'I was only a few months sober when I heard a story about people being lured into sober homes for their insurance policies,' he says. 'I was living in a sober home at the time, and I couldn't get my head around the fact that the same type of care that was saving my life was killing other people. So, I went to see for myself.' Flaherty produced the doc with Carra Greenberg, Harris Fishman and Scott Paskoff. Variety spoke with Flaherty about 'Shuffle' ahead of the film's SXSW screening on Wednesday. Was there any concern about your sobriety when taking on this project, especially because you were living in a sober home at the time? Flaherty: Probably not as much as there should have been. Watching other people get better was a beautiful part of my own experience in treatment and a huge inspiration behind this film. I wasn't prepared for how hard it would be to watch people stay sick. I went to a meeting every day during production, no matter where I was. I had to stay grounded, and that's the only way I know how: go sit in a room with other people who struggle with the same things as me and talk about it. Was it challenging to find people who were trying to recover from addiction who were willing to participate in this doc? The majority of people caught up in the 'Shuffle' end up dead or in jail, so yes, it was challenging to find people to speak on the subject for very practical reasons. People in treatment facilities are largely cut off from contact with the outside world. In some instances, I felt people were too willing, too eager to tell their story. There was a hunger for attention and fame in some instances that felt disingenuous. Honesty was the litmus test. I was interested in speaking with anyone willing to be honest with me. Many people were interviewed, and a few of those were followed for some period of time. The inclusion of the three main characters came down to narrative decisions and what collection of stories would best represent the issues. Did you have any concerns about putting people who are actively suffering from addiction on camera? Absolutely. These are people who are being actively exploited; how do we tell this story without further exploiting them? We let them have the agency in telling their story. We let them speak for themselves rather than have others speak about them. There was no crew involved in filming, ever. It was always one-on-one. 'Shuffle' is a film we created with our characters, not about them. In the film you state that 'Money can't solve the problem. Money is the problem.' But all addiction centers rely on money – no? Yes. And it's a problem because of how the money moves, not the money itself. The financial incentive doesn't encourage recovery. It encourages continued treatment, that's where the profit is. Recovery, in this system of care, represents a loss of profit, a loss of business. That's a fundamental conflict of interest. I think there's a massive illusion that money solves problems like this, and it can, but only if used wisely. Otherwise, it's like pouring gas on a fire. All that said, is it possible to find good treatment in a for-profit system? Yes, I did. So have millions of others. It starts with knowing what to look for. The majority of 'Shuffle' centers around Florida addiction facilities. Is the addiction treatment system totally broken in just Florida or other states as well? I don't believe the treatment system is broken. Is it easily manipulated? Yes, but I believe the treatment system is doing exactly what it was designed to do: create profit. The addiction treatment policy in the U.S. is an economic solution to a public health crisis, a solution designed to create financial incentives and a marketplace of services. It's done that exceedingly well. There are more treatment centers in the U.S. than McDonald's. But under these policies, recovery is only a secondary concern, only a 'reasonably expected outcome.' Untreated addiction costs the federal government over a trillion dollars a year across three industries: healthcare, law enforcement, and the court/prison system. Simply by treating addiction, and by 'treating' I mean providing services within a programmed setting, the government saves billions. At the same time, those services being provided create an enormous financial opportunity in the private sector. So the government saves money while private companies make money, and all this is happening regardless of whether anyone gets sober because the financial incentives are not tied to any positive outcomes. Are Trump's new budget cuts helping or hurting addiction treatment? Slashing services and funding is only going to hurt people, especially doing so blindly. 90% of people who need treatment in this country are still without access to it. What are your hopes for this doc when it comes to distribution? Addiction is about as American as apple pie at this point, yet we don't talk about it enough. There's so much shame and stigma around it. So I'd love for as many people as possible to see the film. Let's get it out there. Let's start a conversation. We'd love to do a small theatrical release in conjunction with distribution on a streaming service. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Oscars 2026: First Blind Predictions Including Timothée Chalamet, Emma Stone, 'Wicked: For Good' and More What's Coming to Disney+ in March 2025
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
‘Capturing Water' Spotlights South Africa's Grassroots Fight to Preserve Precious Resource Before It Runs Out
In early 2018, as South Africa's Western Cape region was in the midst of a yearslong drought that brought its reservoirs to historically low levels, residents of Cape Town and its surroundings began to brace for 'Day Zero,' when the municipal water supply would be exhausted and the taps would run dry. That catastrophe was narrowly averted. But as South African filmmaker Rehad Desai ('Miners Shot Down') warns in his timely new documentary 'Capturing Water,' playing this week at the Joburg Film Festival, the city's water crisis barely scratched the surface of a much larger threat, as climate change pushes South Africa and much of the continent to the brink of a full-scale emergency. More from Variety 'Sculpted Souls' Director Stavros Psillakis on Telling the Story of a Swiss Dentist Who Treated People With Leprosy in Greece Documentary Festival Visions du Réel Expands Global Reach With Record-Breaking Lineup Sundance Award Winner Michal Marczak to Direct Documentary 'Closure,' About a Father's Search for His Missing Teenage Son 'We've got 250 million people facing water stress, mainly in urban areas, across the continent by 2030,' Desai tells Variety. 'The temperatures are just [increasing] exponentially. We're a dry continent. It's becoming drier because of climate change.' As 'Capturing Water' points out, the apocalyptic scenario that faced the Western Cape from roughly 2015-2020 was a disaster years in the making. While drought and climate change were partly to blame, so, too, were years of government neglect and mismanagement, despite the Western Cape widely being considered 'the best functioning municipality we have,' according to Desai. The consequences on both the supply of clean water and the environment have been stark: As the film notes, not only does much of Cape Town's poorly treated sewage get pumped directly into the sea, but it takes a staggering 55 million liters of freshwater a day to get it there. Across South Africa, the picture is even bleaker, with 3.5 million households lacking access to clean water, while 35% of the clean water that is available is lost through leaking infrastructure, according to statistics cited in the film. Desai says the country's municipalities 'don't have enough money or enough competence' to solve the problem, while budgets for government services continue to get slashed. In that climate, the director adds, 'political choices have become critically important.' In Cape Town, just 13% of the population consumes 51% of the water, with that supply rapidly dwindling because of growing household and industrial use. Turbo-charged development, fueled in part by a post-pandemic boom in tourism, has added to the strain, putting access to clean water for millions of local residents directly at odds with a government push for relentless growth. Water rationing has become commonplace — with much of that burden falling disproportionately on the shoulders of the poor. 'You see the inequity of the situation, and the nonsensical nature of the market approach to water, when you see that many, if not most, of our townships are only getting a couple of hours of water a day,' Desai says. 'You can see the class dimension, the class inequality, very starkly at the moment.' That's given rise to a series of increasingly urgent questions. 'How are we going to share what water we have? What is a rational, equitable plan going forward so we don't have the urban elites…consuming as much as they want, while others don't have anything?' Desai asks. While 'Capturing Water' doesn't answer those questions, it nevertheless points to a way forward, with the director noting: 'The best solutions for water are often the local solutions.' The documentary spotlights grassroots efforts to tackle the Western Cape's seemingly intractable water crisis, including working-class activists mobilizing against water restriction devices and water privatization; a farmer taking the Cape Town government to court over plans to cement over a vital aquifer; and a suburban activist tirelessly working to stop the sewage flowing into life-giving wetlands. The fight, however, is not South Africa's alone. 'Capturing Water' highlights the increasingly dystopian industries that have sprung up as climate change threatens water security across the globe. In California, the purchase of millions of acres of farmland by Saudi Arabian companies exporting crops to the drought-stricken Middle East has put that state's aquifers at risk, while financial speculators gambling on water futures are literally banking on the price of water continuing to rise — pushing it further out of reach of the world's poorest billions. 'As water becomes more scarce, there's a bigger squeeze on those who can't afford to pay,' Desai says. In the process, water becomes a commodity subject to the mercies of the global marketplace, rather than a basic human right. 'Capturing Water' follows on the heels of Desai's politically charged documentaries including the Intl. Emmy Award-nominated 'Miners Shot Down,' about the notorious 2012 massacre of 34 mineworkers by South African police in the town of Marikana, and 'How to Steal a Country,' a damning portrait of the billionaire Gupta brothers, who have been accused of turning the country into their personal fiefdom. Desai is planning a wide rollout of 'Capturing Water' — first across South Africa, then the rest of the continent — hoping to harness the urgency of the moment into a rousing call to action. 'That's what's required in this instance — a film which inspires people,' he says. 'I've understood over time that you're not going to see change, or any community of activism that has a critical mass, unless you can move people emotionally. I remain convinced that film is a very important tool in social change.' The Joburg Film Festival runs March 11 – 16. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Oscars 2026: First Blind Predictions Including Timothée Chalamet, Emma Stone, 'Wicked: For Good' and More What's Coming to Disney+ in March 2025
