Documentary drives Dole Food Co. bananas

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In the eyes of Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten, his documentary ‘Bananas!’ is a balanced, nuanced depiction of a trial pitting Nicaraguan banana plantation workers and a prominent L.A. attorney against a powerful multinational agribusiness, reports Reed Johnson.

‘It is a classical David-Goliath story,’ the director said in a phone interview last week.

In the eyes of Dole Food Co., Gertten’s film is an egregiously flawed document based on what Dole lawyer Scott Edelman calls ‘a phony story’ that has been discredited by the allegedly fraudulent conduct of Juan J. Dominguez, the L.A. attorney at the film’s center. Dole, the world’s largest producer of fruits and vegetables, is vowing to sue the filmmaker and the Los Angeles Film Festival for defamation if it screens the movie this week.

Read more of Johnson’s report here and watch the trailer above.