Echoes of Water: Morocco

Directed by Adnane Baraka (2025)

Film Review

Farmers in southeastern Morocco have been struggling with a 20 year drought. This film focuses on their efforts to preserve ancient khetteras their ancestors dug to create artificial oases. Khetteras are 10-25 foot wells dug into aquifers in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. They rely on gravity and natural contours to channel the water to the surface in nearby valleys.

The filmmakers interview a farming family who continue ancestral practices to keep their oasis alive. They gives up grass (for animals) and legume production in the really dry years to preserve their shrinking date palm orchard. They’re meticulous about pruning dead branches to protect his trees from fire.

Morocco’s kheterras have been added to the UN heritage list to protect them from industrial development.

The government also plays an important role in increasing the country’s water supply b constructing new dams, teaching farmers drip irrigation and transferring water from well-supplied basins to those with a deficit.

They’ve also installed large plastic nets over sand dunes adjacent to oases to keep sand from plugging them up and are planning major desalinization plants along the coast.