Nothing Like Chocolate (Kum-Kum Bhavani, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Sofia Arnbom. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2012.

This is a very well-done documentary, and you will never look the same way about chocolate again. Everyone loves chocolate – go see it! Find out the dark secrets behind chocolate…

In the deep forest of the island Grenada one man, Mott Green, started a chocolate factory some years ago. That factory, the smallest in the world, helped the locals with both money and employment. He uses solar power and he some very old equipment to run this business. Green seeks different solutions to the problems of the global chocolate industry.

The chocolate industry is an industry intrenched with child labor, greedy corporations and tasteless products. Nothing like chocolate tells the story about Mott Green, the founder of the Grenada Chocolate Company. It also tells stories about how the country Ivory Coast uses children to gather the cocoa beans with almost no payment. This is one of the reasons that made Mott start this company.

Mott Green went from Oregon to Grenada in 1998, and there he decides to learn how to do chocolate. From the tree to finished product. He leased 100 acres from a neighbor and started the company together with his friend, who later dies in cancer. We get to follow some of the tragedy about his death and how Green deals with it today. All the large chocolate companies tries to buy the small companies so the chocolate industry can be ruled their way. We get to know Mott in a very personal way, there are some interesting interviews with his employees and what they think about him. Is there some love between the workers? Is it maybe because of the threads in chocolate?

Within five years the company now produce 9 to 10 ton of organic chocolate. The documentary shows how this experiment between solar power, old machines and activism creates a business whose values are high quality, fairness and sustainability. Some big chocolate companies around the world use less and less cocoa in their chocolate and can not guarantee that they are not buying beans from places where children labor are used. Green only uses cocoa beans from the local surroundings, sure the price is very high, but it is worth it since we know that the chocolate has been done the right way – organic and the farmers get well paid.

We get to follow Green as he travels to UK and the US and tries to convince different chocolate distributers that his chocolate is the best. His chocolate utilizes the locals more than any other company. How will it end?

In the documentary made by Kum-Kum Bhavani we also get to know how good chocolate is for your health. It contains a lot of anti-oxidants and endorphins – things that makes you live longer. These things should be treated the right way. After watching this documentary I will now in the future think twice before I buy a chocolate bar again. A big applause to Kum-Kum for making this film!

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Published:
02.06.12 / 2pm
Category:
Documentary, Films, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2012