Take one humble tin of ravioli. Where does it come from? Who made it? You won’t learn any facts and figures about food airmiles or ethical eating from this Finnish doc. Instead, we meet nine workers from around the world involved in the process. The tin for the can is mined in Brazil, where a mother of 12 dodges the claw of a giant digger. In Denmark, a gentle man with learning disabilities tells us (via not quite perfect subtitles) that he dreams of starting a family. A frankly terrifying Polish abattoir worker, spattered in blood and sharpening his knives, blithely admits drunkenly beating his wife.
This is a rather dreamy, lyrical doc that doesn’t strike the campaigning, righteous note we’ve come to expect from films about mass-produced food. That said, the gut-turning sight of cows being skinned or the sound of screaming piglets (they shriek like movie vampires, with the anguish of the undead), could turn some viewers veggie. Instead, a more universal theme emerges: minimum-wage employees who work themselves to the bone and dream of sending their children to university.