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In 2011, Swedish director Fredrik Gertten turned his camera on Dole Food Company after the corporation launched a defamation lawsuit and a media pressure campaign to block his earlier documentary Bananas!* from being screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Filmed inside the production office in Stockholm and across videoconferences with Los Angeles, Big Boys Gone Bananas!* documents the legal and public-relations battle that followed, from cease-and-desist letters to a landmark counter-campaign that ultimately forced Dole to withdraw the suit.
AWARDS
Sarasota Film Festival. Best Documentary Feature
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS
Sundance Film Festival
IDFA
Cinema Eye Honors Awards
CPH:DOX
Milano International Film Festival Awards
One filmmaker, one corporation, and the fight for free speech
What happens when a multinational corporation decides a documentary is too dangerous to be seen? Big Boys Gone Bananas!* answers that question with footage shot in real time, turning a legal ambush into one of the most gripping freedom-of-speech stories in recent documentary cinema.
In 2009, Fredrik Gertten completed Bananas!*, a documentary about Nicaraguan plantation workers who sued Dole Food Company over the use of a banned pesticide. When the film was selected for the Los Angeles Film Festival, Dole sent cease-and-desist letters to the festival, its sponsors, and the production company, and filed a defamation lawsuit against Gertten. A damaging article appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Business Journal, and the festival removed the film from competition. Gertten responded by filming every step of the confrontation: office meetings in Stockholm, videoconferences with lawyers in Los Angeles, and interviews with media and legal experts. The result is a civil rights and economy documentary that doubles as a real-time thriller about corporate power, press manipulation, and the cost of telling the truth. Dole ultimately withdrew the lawsuit.
Fredrik Gertten is a Swedish journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Malmo. He directed both Bananas!* (2009) and Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (2011), using the legal battle that arose from the first film as the subject of the second. His approach, filming the crisis from inside his own production company as it unfolded, gives the documentary an immediacy that distinguishes it from conventional investigative filmmaking. Gertten is also recognised for his work in cinema documentary that examines the relationship between institutional power and individual expression.
Big Boys Gone Bananas!* won the Best Documentary Feature jury prize at the Sarasota Film Festival in 2012. The film had its world premiere at IDFA in November 2011 and its United States premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012. It also screened at CPH:DOX and received nominations at the Cinema Eye Honors Awards and the Milano International Film Festival Awards, among other official selections worldwide.
You can watch Big Boys Gone Bananas!* online on GuideDoc, where it is available to stream alongside a curated collection of award-winning documentaries. GuideDoc is dedicated exclusively to documentary film, making it the ideal place to find titles on corporate accountability, civil liberties, and independent cinema. If you enjoy this film, explore further civil rights documentaries and economy documentaries in the GuideDoc catalogue.
Viewers interested in films about filmmaking, institutional power, and the politics of representation may also enjoy Soup is Good Food and The Harbour, both available to stream on GuideDoc.
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