WATER IN THE DESERT is a portrait of an optimistic American archaeology student at the University of New Mexico, Emily Hayes-Rich (25), studying the ancient irrigation systems of the Moroccan Sahara called the khettara. Emily explores the history, management, and inherited knowledge of southern Morocco’s irrigation system with the guidance of the local Water Association to map the social structures that have made such a system viable for millennia, and what lessons desert communities of the present and future can gather from these ancient systems.

WATER IN THE DESERT explores its subject(s) with a collage-like approach, incorporating interviews with interesting, informative moments as well as more artistic, stylized moments between the camera and the landscape.