The CTDRLI was undertaken with the aim of learning from the 2017-2018 Cape Town water crisis. As a recent instance of an urban resilience crisis event, this has global relevance, capable of yielding lessons applicable worldwide and well beyond the sphere of water management. The initiative documented observations, insights and reflections on the crisis using in-depth filmed interviews with individuals across a range of sectors who were involved in crafting the city’s response to the drought. From these interviews we produced three curated series of 56 film-based outputs encapsulating key learnings.