Mill Valley Film Fest: Gripping ‘The Grab’ documentary traces invisible conspiracy to control the world’s water

The initial story seemed like an isolated incident – the 2013 sale of Smithfield Foods, which controls a quarter of the U.S. pork supply, to a Chinese company.

But as further reporting dug up similar overtures – Saudi Arabia quietly buying up land and its aquifer in Arizona, an intricate scheme to take land out from under farmers in Zambia — the scope of the threat became ever more clear. A global power grab is underway as countries scramble to snatch up precious land and vital resources, including water and food, in other nations.

Award-winning reporter Nathan Halverson and fellow journalists at the Emeryville-based Center for Investigative Journalism spent seven years uncovering that web for what became a blitz of stories — and now, a documentary that hits the Mill Valley Film Festival this weekend.

“The Grab,” a gripping film by “Blackfish” director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, chronicles their investigation. It will screen at 6 p.m. Oct. 7 and 1 p.m. Oct. 10 Monday at Mill Valley’s Sequoia theaters. Both Halverson and Cowperthwaite are slated to attend.

The documentary demands undivided attention, as it connects the dots of a serpentine investigation involving multiple countries and factions that eventually led to a journalistic gold mine  – the acquisition of 20,000 messages and a multitude of internal documents pertaining to an organization operated by former Blackwater founder Erik Prince. The plan called for targeting resource-rich areas in Africa, particularly Zambia.

As “The Grab” explores how Russia, China, the U.S. and other countries are reportedly staking a claim to resources in unethical ways, it also celebrates never-give-up journalism, the fading sort that requires intense vetting and re-vetting to ensure that facts get double and triple checked.

It was an eye-opening experience for Cowperthwaite.

“I didn’t quite grasp the idea that investigative journalism is in such embattled territory now, until I started to work with Nate,” she says.

Over those seven years of investigation, even Halverson was surprised by some of the puzzle pieces — Russia, for example, hiring away American cowboys to work on that country’s changing landscape.

“You just keep peeling back layer after layer, and as it all starts to sort of become clear what’s happening, and the dots start connecting, you realize that you’re not working on one story but the story of the 21st century,” Halverson says. “All of these things are so interrelated.”

Along the way, the investigation put the reporters and the film crew in the crosshairs of powerful people. At one point, the team flew to Zambia, where they were detained as soon as they landed, and told they must return home. As they waited in the airport security office, they glanced up at a wall and spotted their names and passport IDs posted there.

“I think we started realizing that turning over all these stones and really seeing, not just that these were very powerful people, but these were powerful people who have access to all sorts of retaliatory measures… That’s a little harrowing,” Cowperthwaite says. “But I think that Nate would agree that our risk is nothing compared to the people on the ground in Zambia and what they undergo every day, and the folks in Arizona who are experiencing ‘The Grab’ in real time. Ours doesn’t hold a candle to that.”

There’s a specter of colonialism running through “The Grab,” as well. The tone of the documents and racist emails echoed back to other dark periods in African history and hit both director and reporter hard.

“This idea that humanity evolves in a trajectory way — this casts a lot of doubt on that, at least for me,” Cowperthwaite says. “We’re supposed to learn that we’re all connected, that this is a planet we all share, and what hurts you will eventually hurt all of us. It felt like the opposite. The parallels (to historic colonialism) are just obvious. It’s that same continent, and it’s people who don’t have a voice.”

If seeing land taken from Zambians, who are left unhoused, or hearing from struggling Arizona ranchers doesn’t affect you, a glimpse of the future might, Cowperthwaite suggests.

“We’re going to see (the impact) in grocery stores,” she says. “We’re going to see it with refugees. We’re going to see it with disease. It does not observe borders.”