Published on 15-06-2026, Last modified on 15-06-2026
“Washout”: Film Showing & Global South-North Conversations on the Politics of Land, Resistance & Solidarity
The Human Rights Research Network, Green Office, Conflict Research Group, Rural Radicalism Research Cluster and INSPIRA warmly invite you to the next edition of the seminar series ‘Building Capacities: “Washout”: Film Screening and Global South-North Conversations on the Politics of Land, Resistance and Solidarity’ on 7 July, 13:30-16:00 at the Green Office.
Wash Out tells the story of a group of landless farmers in Sicogon Island, located in the Philippines, coming together and standing up against a corporate behemoth. The film follows how these farmers came so close to victory – and how they were betrayed, and continue to be betrayed, by a government that claims to be on their side. Sicogon was turned into a luxury tourist paradise for wealthy foreigners, pushing many local residents off their land so the island could cater to visitors from the Global North.
Their struggle echoes the quieter but no less violent forms of dispossession unfolding elsewhere—from the gentrifying neighborhoods of Brussels where working‑class residents are priced out, to Belgian farmlands seized for logistics hubs and industrial expansion, to communities around the world displaced to make way for green energy transitions and energy‑hungry data centers that serve the digital elite.
Following three women whose lives became intertwined in the course of this long struggle, the documentary reveals the lengths that the rich and mighty would go to in order to undermine reforms and prevent wealth redistribution from taking place. It sheds light on the role played by the state in land grabbing. And it exposes the more sophisticated tactics corporations now use to break resistance to dispossession. Yet these local patterns also reveal a global counter‑current: from tenant unions in Brussels to farmers’ organizations in Belgium to anti–data‑center coalitions across Europe and Asia, people continue to resist the erasure of their homes, their land, and their futures. But more than just a story of how the powerful always get their way, the documentary is also a story of how, against all odds, the disempowered fight back.
PROGRAM
12h30 – 13h30 Networking lunch
13h30 – 13h40 Welcome and introduction
13h40 – 14h50 Film screening
14h50-15h20 Group discussions
15h20 –16h00 Plenary discussion with Dr. Herbert Docena
The event will bring together academic staff, activists, students, and NGO practitioners into a transdisciplinary global South and North dialogue.
Registration via https://event.ugent.be/registration/WashOut07July
Facebook page event: https://fb.me/e/8uDfWjqNT
About the filmmaker