Watch We Feed the World For Free

Sadly Over-hyped

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Often beautiful cinematography. Quite stark at times, but necessarily so. This is a very valuable film from an point of view not often heard.This is a close look at the current production methods for what we eat. It reveals much that is hidden from the consumer. It shows factory farming up close, the source of most of our supermarket offerings. All of the solutions to the issues raised in the film are not presented, but the concerns and need to come up with solutions is persuasive. Clearly, considerable effort is required, but there are many ways to get there and they all start with opening the eyes to that is going on.The film illustrates how the overriding pursuit of profit affects the nutritional values, chemical and genetic hazards in our food.A good starter on intelligently approaching food. I suggest watching it to figure out what to do next.

This documentary was the talk about town for a while in my corner of the world, so I was quite keen to see it. It turned out the be the type of movie which would have thrown me into the thralls of delicious juvenile mal de vivre when I was still juvenile; nowadays I see it less benevolently as subtle manipulation on part of the filmmaker. Basically the movie delivers a pastiche of interesting images and statements, and then juxtaposes them in an unnerving way. We see large soy bean plantations being cut into the Brazilian rainforest (or is it just Brazilian forest?), some talking head says that the ground there is totally unsuitable for soy bean production (whatever that means), there is a text insert stating that an enormous amount of Brazilian rainforest has been cut down (although it doesn't say whether this was for soy bean production), then we see images of desperately poor Brazilians who don't have enough food to eat or access to clean water -- all this with images of tons of slightly stale bread being dumped in Vienna still lingering in the viewer's mind from the opening scene. OK, what do we make of this, apart from the fact that the world is an imperfect place? How do we get those loaves of bread from Vienna to the Brazilian wastelands? The movie has no intention of telling you, it contents itself with subtly upsetting its viewers -- it leaves you in no doubt that something is wrong in the state of Denmark, but doesn't tell you exactly what it is or how to fix it. Maybe one way to help those peasants would be to give them work on the soy bean plantation, but then the movie is against the global food trade -- so no dice. It is also against farm subsidies and protectionism, and suggests that food is generally too cheap and that local farmers should earn more, while the multinationals are making far too much money -- all of which is certainly well-intentioned, but also contradictory. If you have smartened up and turned away from buying the cheapest and most processed foodstuffs, if you try to buy regionally and seasonally, and are paying more attention at taste rather than looks, then you are already past this movie. However if you are a less discerning consumer then this movie is probably a good starter.

So I begin my selection of this year's SIFF with a documentary. Directed by Erwin Wagenhofer, We Feed the World begins by highlighting a very fundamental wastage. That of overnight bread, tons of it being offloaded, meant for the incinerated, when there are thousands left hungry.The documentary focuses on various aspects on the supply side of the food chain, giving some insight to the various industries which produce food, like fishing, vegetables and poultry. It also provides a glimpse into the political side of supplying food, that of the profit maximization strategy of any public company (here, it's Nestle), of the genetically modified seeds which supposedly produces superior crop as opposed to better tasting, natural ones, and various EU plans and initiatives which seem to go down the wrong path instead of fulfilling its supposedly planned objectives.While it covers a lot of ground, some segments proved to be a little draggy and preachy. I particularly enjoyed the segment on the fishing industry, where there are plans to wrest knowledge from the small timers operating smaller fishing operations, and to eventually merge/close them down when the bigger boys come into the picture. As demonstrated in the movie, there are reasons why big trawlers doesn't equate to fresher and better catches.The other segment which moved was on the Brazilian's poor north-eastern parts, where on one hand, you have very poor people going hungry all the time, yet Brazil's one of the major exporters of maize to Europe. Maize which are used for burning for fuel generation. It just boggles the mind, and makes you feel sad at the way things work, illogical as it may seem, in the name of profit - watching the kids drink untreated murky water, and the adults resorting to unnatural means of keeping their children alive, will gloom your day.And I could have swore off chicken come the final segment. Nowadays lifestock are treated as an 8-week cycle of a production line, from incubating, hatching, fattening, until the final days of slaughtering, where they're hung upside down by the legs in conveyor belts, before passing through a circular bladed discs where their throats are slit, and left bleeding till death. For those which are missed by the blades, there is a butcher on standby with a knife to do the deed.But while the movie tried to made its points, what I found lacking are the many ways in which to link the message to the issues. Many times it felt a little sporadic, or the linking done quite weakly through intertitles. That aside, perhaps I'm already attuned to the more in-your-face style of Michael Moore, nevermind if there are echoes that his style is manipulative. For a topic like this, perhaps it could gain from that bit of controversy to hammer its opinions through.

I saw this film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.We Feed the World, by filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer, had its world premiere at the festival. The film, two years in the making, takes a look at the production of food and the effects on it from globalization and commercialization.The film is divided up into sections, each of which focuses on a different part of the industry. It jumps from fishermen in Brittany, to massive greenhouse operations in Spain, to the use of hybrid seeds in eastern Europe, to the production of soya in Brazil, to chicken production in Europe, and finally to Switzerland, the home of Nestle, the biggest food corporation in the world. Each section talks about the challenges facing people and the impact felt around the world. There is no narration; the people interviewed in the film simply tell their stories and give their opinions.There is the fisherman in Brittany, talking about the effect of European Union regulations on his livelihood. There is the senior manager with agriculture giant Pioneer, who gives his own personal views at odds with the company line. And then there is the CEO of Nestle, who matter-of-factly states his own opinions about food which may seem shocking to many. Interspersed are interviews with a food expert from the UN who provides insight into how the things shown in the film are affecting, often adversely, people around the world.The movie is not overly didactic, but it does cause you to think about how the food you eat is produced and how so many people in the world can be starving when so much food is produced and wasted in the industrialized world.Erwin Wagenhofer attended the screening and did a Q&A after the movie: - When asked about how or what we should even eat, Wagenhofer said you should think about where your food comes from and how it is produced, and buy locally-produced food.Asked how he managed to secure the interviews, especially with people who might not normally participate in such a documentary, Wagenhofer said the first time he approaches someone, he never brings a camera. In fact, he doesn't for the first 4 or 5 times, by which time people see he is not out to make fun of them, and they eventually agree to be filmed.When asked about the comments the head of Nestle, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, makes, Wagenhofer said that he believes those are Brabeck's actual feelings about the subject, and that he probably would not be upset about the film in any way.Why food? Wagenhofer said that food is something close to everyone, that everyone has to eat every day.On his next project, Wagenhofer couldn't say what it is, other than it is a step forward from this film.The film was finished only one month ago.When asked what we should take from this film, Wagenhofer said the film is called "We Feed the World", not "They Feed the World," meaning that we are all part of the system, and that it is up to "us" to change it, as "they" have no desire to.