The Price of Sugar.

"The tainted relationship between the dessert on our tables and the suffering of those who produce it gets a horrifying workout in Bill Haney's multi-layered account of Haitian cane-cutters in the Dominican Republic," writes Ella Taylor, reviewing The Price of Sugar in the Voice.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir notes that "the Vicini family, sugar barons of the Dominican Republic, have hired Patton Boggs, a major Washington law firm, to try to halt the film's release, or at least paint it as slanted and defamatory. Narrated by Paul Newman, Haney's film follows an Anglo-Spanish missionary priest, Christopher Hartley, as he tries to bring some justice to the slavery-like conditions under which Haitian immigrants cut sugar cane in the Vicini fields."

Updated through 9/28.

Nick Dawson talks with Haney for Filmmaker.

Earlier: Nick Schager at Slant.

Update, 9/28: "Like most documentary polemics, it simplifies the issues it confronts and selects facts that bolster its black-and-white, heroes-and-villains view of raw economic power," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. But what facts. Holden runs down a list himself; if you doubt you'll be able to catch the doc, read the review for that alone.

Posted by dwhudson at September 27, 2007 8:58 AM