‘The American Southwest’ Is a Love Letter and a Plea for the Mighty Colorado River

“American Southwest” shows an aerial view of the Colorado River.

Ben Masters and his team spent 80 days at the edge of the Vermillion Cliffs in Arizona, their cameras trained on a condor nest as they waited to capture footage of a chick taking its first flight.

Instead, they caught the moment when the gawky bald bird slipped, then tumbled hundreds of feet off the sheer rock face. The bird survived, and clips of its day-and-a-half struggle to climb back to its nest mark one of the most riveting scenes in The American Southwest,” the fourth feature-length wildlife documentary produced by Masters and Fin and Fur Films.

The documentary traces the green ribbon of the Colorado River nearly 1,500 miles as it flows through forests and canyons near its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains and into the diversion tunnels and irrigation canals of Southern California before vanishing onto a sunbaked stretch of dried mud in Mexico.

The 107-minute film includes plenty of how’d-they-get-that-shot moments, from a cutthroat trout leaping from the river to gulp a giant salmonfly to a beaver looking expectantly up at a tree it’s been chewing on just as it teeters over. But beyond the captivating images of wildlife lies a deeper message—humans are bleeding the Colorado River dry.

The river, the most litigated in the world, supported about 2 million people in 1900. Today 40 million rely on it as their main water source.

Masters teamed with American Rivers, a non-profit organization that works to restore and protect wild rivers, to create the documentary, and its call to action. The film opens in theaters around the Southwest U.S. on September 5.

The documentary highlights charismatic animals and behavior from each ecosystem along the river’s pathway. “It’s told from the perspective of the land and the wildlife,” Masters tells Outside. “And it’s an objective look at our society’s relationship with the world.”

The film features footage of bugling elk, shape-shifting giant salmon caddisflies, which look like something from a horror show as they crack out of their exoskeletons, and water-hoarding saguaro cactus—as well as a family of charmingly industrious beavers.

“It’s cool watching (the beavers) chop down trees, but it’s a lot more than a cute animal doing something interesting,” he says. “These animals are providing an invaluable service throughout these wetlands by slowing down water and purifying water.”

Getting the footage took time—three years in all.

“There’s lots of pre-production planning and understanding species and developing relationships with biologists to get those scenes,” Masters says. “Then you just never know what nature’s going to throw at you.”

Quannah Chasinghouse Lends Her Voice

The film’s narrator, Indigenous model and activist Quannah Chasinghorse (featured on Outside’s September/October 2023 cover), adds the voice of the Indigenous people who have long lived along the Colorado River. She was born in Arizona and raised on Navajo Nation land in Arizona and Alaska.

“Too often in nature films and documentaries, Indigenous people are excluded, even though we have lived in, stewarded, and fought to protect these lands for generations,” Chasinghorse said in a prepared statement.

Masters, who grew up in Amarillo, Texas, where he hunted and worked as a ranch hand and oil field worker before earning a degree in wildlife biology from Texas A&M University, made his first full-length film, Unbranded, in 2015. It followed the adventures of Masters and three friends as they adopted, trained, and rode a string of wild mustangs from Mexico to Canada.

Next, Masters and four others hiked, rode, pedaled and paddled along the Texas-Mexico border to film The River and the Wall, which examined the potential impact of a border wall on the region’s wildlife and humans. Most recently, Masters produced Deep in the Heart, narrated by Matthew McConaughey, which highlights the wildlife of Texas, from black bears and mountain lions to whale sharks and bison.

The Colorado River Plan Is Up for Renegotiation

Masters timed the release of The American Southwestto raise awareness about the upcoming renegotiation of Colorado River’s management plan in 2026. The plan was last updated 20 years ago, and today the river’s water is over-allocated and it runs dry before it reaches the Gulf of California.

“There’s more paper water than wet water,” Masters says. “States have to try to figure out how to progress into the future, so water management is decided cordially among states instead of in the courts.”

Today, about 25 percent of the Colorado River basin’s water feeds California’s Imperial Valley, where farmers use it to irrigate crops, including water-hogging alfalfa. “A third of that alfalfa is shipped overseas to feed livestock in foreign countries,” Masters says. “Is that the greatest use of water? In my opinion no, it’s not.”

The film ends with a glimpse of a tiny portion of river delta that remains where the river runs out in Mexico. In the scene, huge flocks of birds soar over a lush landscape. It’s a reminder, Masters says, of how the entire delta once looked—and how it could look again if the river was better managed.

“We want to influence negotiation so there’s a greater value on nature-based solutions. It’s bullshit to drain the river dry,” he says.

A Love Letter—and a Plea

Masters, 37, says he wanted to make the documentary because of the impact the American Southwest has had on him. He calls it a “love letter to the landscapes and wildlife that shaped him.”

“I’ve just been in love with landscapes of the Southwest for my whole life,” he says. “Those landscapes and public lands, the big vast unfenced freedom that still exists, have shaped my values and my land ethic and I wanted to give back,” he says. “This is my attempt at inspiring people to conserve the landscape and wildlife of the southwest.”

The credits include a QR code that links to the American Rivers website, where Masters says he hopes viewers will send a message to their political representatives that we need better management of the river.

“It is not OK to use the river and exhaust it so completely that it literally goes dry,” he says. “It’s insane that we continue to manage the river like it’s 1922, when the management plan was devised. There needs to be a vast update that reflects the reality of the water crisis we’re facing.”

It’s also important to recognize there’s not a shortage of water in the Southwest, Masters says.

“There’s so much water that hundreds of acres of acre feet are exported in the form of alfalfa that’s shipped overseas. And if there’s enough water to export overseas, there’s for damn sure enough water to give to the river to provide for wildlife, habitat and economies that rely on the river, and for ourselves to enjoy through recreation.”

Masters, who lives in Austin with his wife and two young children, is already working on his next project— a river-focused sequel to “Deep in the Heart,” due in theaters in fall 2026.

“I was born in Texas. This is my home, and I had the duty to tell the story of its wildlife and its rivers,” he says. “Texas is also changing so rapidly that a lot of species and landscapes we’re filming may be forever developed or extirpated. I wanted to capture those images so my children can see what it looked like before it was developed.”

The American Southwest will be available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime starting October 10.