Film    Read comments (8)    Add a comment

Black Gold
Black Gold 

   

UK, USA 2006 | 82min

Language: Amharic, Italian, English

Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil. But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.
Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.

"Black Gold" is an eye-opening film that reveals the true essence of the coffee industry, showing why a coffee grower gets only a fraction of the price paid for by the end user. Against the backdrop of Tadesse's journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world's coffee trade becomes apparent. It also becomes evident how difficult it is for a grower to reach the end user and dodge multiple greedy middlemen. Fair coffee trade could be a first catalyst for coffee growing countries to help getting out of the quagmire of poverty and would give an opportunity for a poor country like Ethiopia to develop on her own.
Tõnis Leht

Director: Mark Francis, Nick Francis
Prod: Nick Francis, Marc Francis
DoP: Nick Francis, Marc Francis
Music: Andreas Kapsalis
Ed: Hugh Williams
Production: A Speak it/Fulcrum Production
World Sales: The Film Sales Co


Festivals and awards: Sundance, Melbourne, London, Berlin, Seattle, Rome