From the Venice Film Festival to the Regiostars 2025 Award, Nature-based Solutions are making their voice heard

At the end of August, the short film “Drops of Dew” was screened at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival,  during the event “EU Crossing Stories: The Role of EU Funds in Supporting Visual Arts and Cinema”, bringing the importance of Nature-based Solutions to the attention of a wide audience.

Produced within the NAWAMED project (Nature Based Solutions for Domestic Water Reuse in Mediterranean Countries), funded by the ENI CBC MED programme, “Drops of Dew” tells the story of Emma, a young girl searching for solutions to water scarcity, who discovers that nature itself provides the answers.

In the final scene, Emma is inspired by the homemade dirty water treatment system that her mother taught her. She goes on to study and become a professional who, alongside colleagues from across the Mediterranean region, invents the green living wall. In the short film, this is the Wall2Water (W2W) of Ferla, one of the URWAN target cities, which implements the Start Park co-design process and creates a digital twin to support future decisions for a more resilient future.

This pioneering installation treats and reuses greywater for secondary purposes such as flushing toilets and irrigating gardens. The communicative power of cinematic language makes this concept accessible to all!

The film, already selected and awarded in more than 30 film festivals across the globe, was warmly received in Venice, where it was presented by Barbara Sarnari (SVI.MED. EuroMediterranean Center for Sustainable Development) and Ilaria Principi (IRIDRA). As Barbara explained in her remarks, “Cinema has always been a powerful medium to communicate and inspire. Through ‘Drops of Dew’ we wanted to create empathy, because numbers and reports alone cannot convey the urgency and potential of these solutions”. 

Beyond its artistic success, the short film highlights a concrete message: Nature-based Solutions (NbS), such as living green walls, can improve water resilience, enhance biodiversity, and help Mediterranean communities adapt to today’s challenges.

After all, “sharing knowledge and stories also means defending the right of every person to exist and having access to the resources needed to live” – as Barbara stated while addressing the importance of Mediterranean cooperation for the success of this project.

This recognition at Venice comes just as NAWAMED has been selected as a finalist in the 2025 REGIOSTARS Awards, the prestigious competition organized by the European Commission to celebrate the most inspiring EU-funded projects.