Dir: Fredrik Gertten
Year: 2009
Documentary
Sweden
Spanish and English with English subtitles

Juan “Accidentes” Dominguez is a personal injury lawyer and a member of the “Million Dollar Club” of attorneys in Southern California. And now he’s on his biggest case ever. This film covers his defense of a trial group of Nicaraguan banana workers against their employers, Dole Food, a US company. The case hinges around Dominguez proving that outlawed pesticide used by Dole is causing infertility amongst banana workers. The whole region of Chinandega is an ecological disaster zone. The pesticide spray has left its mark everywhere. The soil, the water, the animals and crops are all affected. With important global ramifications hinging on the case, can Dominguez beat the corporate giant or will the company get away with it? In this suspenseful documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten sheds new light on the global politics of food.

In 2001, global social movements gathered at the first World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The WSF represented a new way of thinking, placing people and not the market at the centre of decision-making. Hopes ran high. No longer would the third world continue to finance the first. The years that followed have seen significant change as successive left of centre presidents have taken power across Latin America. First Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, then Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Vazquez in Uruguay, Bachelet in Chile, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Equador and Lugo in Paraguay – all proposing a break with neo-liberalism. This film looks in detail at what this new generation of leaders means for ordinary working class people in Latin America. With the continent’s tortured past, there is much to celebrate and much to reform. Yet the market manages to maintain its stranglehold on decision-making, reforms fall short of expectations and the war on poverty has barely started.