The Chicago River - A River in reverse Gear

The city of Chicago owes its rise to become the third largest city in the USA to its river - and to an engineering coup. The Chicago River supplied the people of the North American metropolis with drinking water. But it also transported the city's wastewater into Lake Michigan, which is part of the largest freshwater reservoir in the world. Everything flowed into the lake, including the leftovers from Chicago's gigantic meat production. A canal built in 1900 - hailed as the construction of the century - caused the river to change its direction. Ever since the canal was opened, the Chicago river has been taking Chicago's wastewater into the Mississippi rather than into Lake Michigan. Not everyone is happy about this. *** Rivers connect people. They are lifelines, economic drivers, traffic routes. Humans have tamed them over the centuries. The U.S. are probably the country in which river ecosystems have been changed most extremely due to humans straightening and channelizing them, and using water to create power. It is the US where the largest dams, deepest locks, longest canals and aqueducts exist. Rivers gave their names to world-famous cities, from Miami to Detroit or Los Angeles. But hardly anyone today knows the rivers that flow into them. And the American dream of man's victory over nature is revealing itself more and more as an illusion. In her five-part series, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Katja Esson tells unusual river stories of the Colorado River, the Miami River, the Los Angeles River, the Chicago River and the Detroit River. With surprising images and from surprising angles. On her journey, she meets a wide variety of people who, with charm and great openness, tell of how the river shapes their lives.