Big Boys Gone Bananas!*

In 2009, Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten was preparing to take his doc ‘Bananas!’ to the Los Angeles Film Festival when the film’s subject, Dole Foods (a big shot in bananas), began a campaign to counter claims made in the film. Now, Gertten has made a follow-up about standing up to Dole, which may wish it never put signature to lawsuit in the first place. The first film investigated Dole’s use of pesticides in Nicaragua in the 1970s, and Dole contested (wrongly, it was ruled) that one of Gertten’s witnesses was a fraud. Dole’s campaign  intensified over several months: they put pressure on the LA Film Festival, engineered negative press and wrote to Swedish MPs. As well as using his insurance to hire a top lawyer, Gertten took another approach: he made this film, essentially a video diary . So we’re party to legal and journalistic shenanigans that show the extent to which Dole was prepared to go to protect its reputation. Compelling and often shocking.