Experiencing Interruptions?

The price of progress

Progress involves risks. Yes but, to what extent?
Within the context of urgency of overpopulation and global warming the film is a portrait of the decision making of the Food Industry. It reveals intrigues, fears, emotions, political pressures and arguments of some of key players in Europe. Main corporate lobbies, politicians, renowned scientists and investigative journalists discuss what is at stake in Food dilemmas? Power, money or health?

  • Victor Luengo
    Director
  • Victor Luengo
    Writer
  • Victor Luengo (Enero Films)
    Producer
  • Bernard Url
    Key Cast
    "Executive director of EFSA"
  • Mella Frewen
    Key Cast
    "Director General FoodDrinkEurope"
  • Gilles Eric Seralini
    Key Cast
    "Molecular Biologist"
  • Michael Hansen
    Key Cast
    "Senior Staff Scientist Consumer Union of USA"
  • Jean Philipe Azoulay
    Key Cast
    "Director General ECPA European Crop Protection Agency"
  • Nathalie Moll
    Key Cast
    "Former Secretary General Europa Bio"
  • Janusz Bujnicky
    Key Cast
    "Scientific Advisor European Commission"
  • Kat Z.Guyton
    Key Cast
    "Senior Toxicologist IARC International Agency for Research of Cancer"
  • Angelika Hilbeck
    Key Cast
    "Senior Researcher of Biology and Agroecology and ex chair of ENSSER"
  • David Kirkland
    Key Cast
    "Genetic Toxicology consultant for Monsanto-Bayer"
  • Franziska Achterberg
    Key Cast
    "Eu Policy Director at Greenpeace Europe"
  • Nina Holland
    Key Cast
    "Researcher Corporate Europe Observatory"
  • Nicolas Olea
    Key Cast
    "Proffesor and Toxicology researcher"
  • Mikel Porta
    Key Cast
    "Proffesor and Toxicology researcher"
  • Carey Gillam
    Key Cast
    "Investigative journalism at Monsanto Papers affair"
  • Katryn Forgie
    Key Cast
    "Plaintiff's attorney at Monsanto Lawsuit"
  • Christopher Portier
    Key Cast
    "Expert in Carcinogenity Risk Evaluation and Environmental Health"
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    51 minutes 52 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 1, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    119 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Spain
  • Country of Filming:
    Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English, French, German, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    4k MOV mostly.
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2:39:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • Salon Indien Films
    Country: Spain
    Rights: All Rights
  • Mediawan Right
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Victor Luengo

VICTOR LUENGO Zaragoza, Spain 1973

I come from an arts background. For 10 years I was represented by a Spanish gallery until I decided to migrate to the digital image and journalism. At the halfway stage I studied History and Anthropology. Then, I was fascinated by post-modernism theories which explain how Language shapes our everyday reality.

Since then, I have worked as journalist and filmmaker in South America, Cambodia, Madagascar and Spain. I was also editor of Magnum Spain, Seven and AFP, amongst other agencies. Now I earn my living in the field of Advertising working for very diverse clients and markets here in Spain.

The Price of Progress is my first film where somehow my professional career as photographer, journalist and filmmaker joins with the task of an emerging Anthropologist who is asking himself about the steps that our society are taking.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Director Statement

We, as a society, are used to living in continuous uncertainty in times of post-truth and deeply hyperreality. Here the truth seems to be a menu in which everyone has the right to take whatever they wish. This could be permissible in particular issues, though when everybody’s life is at stake, to follow ambiguous criteria might genuinely prove to be dangerous.

I have worked for a long time in South America. In Mendoza, Argentina, small communities are ravaged by the herbicide Glyphosate. In Eastern Bolivia, there are major monocultures grabbed from once small and indigenous lands. And there, as in Peru or in Ecuador, farmers complain that land is too barren following decades of intensive farming.

Meanwhile in Europe, where these risks are far away, big farming corporations continue promoting a kind of endless doubt platform where science seems more like a spectacle and marketing rather than pursuing knowledge and wellbeing for everyone.

Quite often indictment and reform are needed. That explains why there are so many recent documentaries that report Food Industry abuses.

That said, The Price of Progress should not be seen as an accusing finger at any particular industry. Rather, through all the debates, our aim is to unveil the motivations, needs and the logic of people who carrying out the current food chain.

As only with a nonaligned standpoint and adopting a neutral approach to the matter, and the trye dimension of the difficulties we are facing be displayed.

Life and society are highly complex. There are many different institutions involved in the corporate world vision and behind them are thousands of workers in their offices sharing similar arguments, which are much more familiar to everyone than we might think.

It is for this reason, in order to gain credibility, I wanted from the beginning to let everyone
expose clearly their point of views and their expectations.
Only in this way the industrial farm vision could be contrasted without prejudices with the organic farm vision or any other option.

In the next decade there is a great deal at stake. The eyes of the world are opening, and I believe history is giving us this moment to choose a better path. These times predict lack of resources, global warming, suffering and serious conflicts. These are well-known facts. That is why the rights and wrongs of the farming path that we take will be crucial to determine that coming future. Every effort must be made to know better how our society is and how serious are the risks we are facing in the coming decades.

Choosing the most suitable option is key and I hope this film will help towards this.