Symposium 'Washout: Film Showing and Global South-North Conversations on the Politics of Land, Resistance and Solidarity'

Wash Out traces how landless farmers on Sicogon Island organized against a corporate giant as their home was remade into a luxury enclave for Global North tourists. Their near‑victory—and the state’s ongoing betrayal—exposes how governments enable land grabbing while corporations refine ever more sophisticated tactics to fracture resistance.

The film’s focus on three women whose lives converge in this struggle reveals both the intimate costs of dispossession and the structural forces arrayed against redistribution. Sicogon’s story resonates far beyond the Philippines: with Brussels neighborhoods pushed into gentrification, Belgian farmlands absorbed into logistics corridors, and communities worldwide displaced for green‑energy zones and data‑center expansion.

Yet the documentary also illuminates a counter‑current—tenant unions, farmers’ movements, anti–data‑center coalitions—showing how, despite asymmetrical power, people continue to defend land, home, and future against dispossession.