BANANAS!*

From the press release:

BANANAS!*, filmmaker Fredrik Gertten’s suspenseful, layer-peeling, non-fiction chronicle on the global politics of food and First vs. Third world dynamics, will be presented in special spotlight screenings at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival on June 20 and June 23, 2009 in Westwood.

Directed by Gertten, one of Sweden’s preeminent documentarians and investigative journalists, BANANAS!* focuses on a slippery fact trail and a landmark legal case pitting a dozen Nicaraguan plantation workers against Dole Food Corporation and its alleged usage of a deadly banned pesticide and its probable link to generations of sterilized workers.

Central to both the film and case is Juan “Accidentes” Dominguez, a Los Angeles-based personal injury attorney who, although iconic within the Latino community for his ubiquitous billboard ads, is unquestionably facing the biggest case and challenge in his career.

As the legal representation on the first Nicaraguan sterility case to be tried in US courts, Dominguez and his colleague, Duane C. Miller, are breaking new ground. Theirs is a bellwether case: The first of thousands of cases awaiting trial in Nicaragua and the first legal case where foreign farm workers were allowed to testify against an American multinational corporation before a full jury on U.S. soil. At stake are the futures of generations of workers, their families as well as the culture of global, multinational business.

“I’m beyond thrilled to have my film as a spotlight screening at the Los Angeles Film Festival,” said the Sweden-based Gertten. “Los Angeles is so central to the story. (The festival) is top notch and the fact that the actual case and the film’s lead subject (Dominguez) take place and are based in L.A. makes it that much more fitting.”

BANANAS!* is produced by Malmö Sweden-based WG Film and producer Margarete Jangård in co-production with Magic Hour Films (Denmark), ITVS International; Film i Skåne, SVT and Swedish Television(Sweden); with support from The Sundance Documentary Fund, The Swedish Film Institute; Danish Film Institute, Nordisk Film and TV Fond, ZDF/ARTE (Germany/France), YLE (Finland), NRK (Norway), TSR (Switzerland), VPRO (The Netherlands) and Odisea (Spain/Portugal).

For updated screening times and ticket information, please visit: www.lafilmfest.com/2009.

For more information, please contact:
David Magdael & Associates – Los Angeles
Winston Emano, wemano@tcdm-associates.com
David Magdael, dmagdael@tcdm-associates.com

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