An allegorical documentary about the workers of the world, whose common destinies and hopes for peace are symbolically united by the rivers that run through their respective lands.

The film was shot on the Volga, the Mississippi, the Nile, the Yangtze, the Amazon and the Ganges and combines these images of five continents with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich and the poetry of both Bertolt Brecht and Paul Robeson. 

Originally commissioned by the 1953 Congress of the Weltgewerkschaftbund (WGB) in Vienna, Song of the Rivers became the classic filmic expression of the International Solidarity Movement.