Pistachio Wars
Journalist Yasha Levine follows a lead on a water sale between a farmer and a small desert town—and discovers a hidden side to California’s healthy snack industry.
At the center of the story are Stewart & Lynda Resnick. They’re billionaires. They live in the flashiest mansion in Beverly Hills and have a monopoly on the pistachio trade.
They’ve taken control of California's water—draining rivers, building plantations in the middle of a desert, leaving a trail of environmental collapse.
Towns ravaged by drought, farms built on oil fields, mass extinction, a water heist straight from the plot of Chinatown, and…war with Iran? It’s a road trip into the dark heart of the American Dream.
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Yasha LevineDirector
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Rowan WernhamDirector
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Yasha LevineWriter
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Rowan WernhamWriter
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Rowan WernhamProducer
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Project Type:Documentary, Feature
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Genres:Environment, Politics, Food
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Runtime:1 hour 15 minutes
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Completion Date:December 20, 2023
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Production Budget:150,000 USD
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Country of Origin:New Zealand
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:Yes
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Student Project:No
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Doc EdgeChristchurch
New Zealand
June 22, 2024
National Premiere
Special Mention: Best New Zealand Film, Winner: Best New Zealand Emerging Filmmaker -
Ji HlavaJi Hlava
Czech Republic
October 30, 2024
International Premiere
Winner: Best Film on Knowledge
Yasha Levine is an investigative journalist who has covered California politics for over a decade. He is the author of Surveillance Valley, a book about Silicon Valley and the secret military history of the Internet. His work has been featured in Wired, Slate, The Nation, MSNBC and others.
Rowan Wernham is a New Zealand born designer & filmmaker. His debut feature ‘Pistachio Wars’ premiered at Doc Edge in 2024 where he was awarded ‘Best New Zealand Emerging Filmmaker’. His 2010 animated short 'x.o.genesis' screened at numerous festivals including Slamdance, Maryland, and Glasgow, and was a prize winner at the LA New Wave film festival.
Framed by co-director Yasha Levine’s experience migrating to California from the Soviet Union as a child, Pistachio Wars is ultimately about the transformation of Central California — its development since the mass settlements of the gold rush. Within just over a hundred years, what was once a lush river valley with an abundance of life has been remade as a toxic industrialized wasteland.
Prisons, sewage dumps, suburban developments, strip malls, giant highways, oil fields, rivers replaced with concrete canals, and endless rows of crops on dusty flattened earth.
But it's not all a necessary byproduct of human existence — the excessive development is driven by an American oligarchy, billionaires who have hyped bubbles to enrich themselves, and transformed the landscape for maximum short term profit.
In Pistachio Wars this story is told via the current titans of California agriculture — Stewart & Lynda Resnick, modern day grotesques, running a dirty, extractive cash crop business, driven by gimmicky marketing, yet (very consciously) marketing themselves as ‘The Wonderful Company’ — philanthropists who have retained a largely positive public image — even as they maintain close ties to a neoconservative war lobby that keeps their main competitor shut out of the market.
Recognition for Pistachio Wars:
“We wanted to specifically honour this documentary for its deep investigative reporting. At a time when we are seeing news organizations struggling worldwide, we deeply commend the filmmaking team for their rigorous independent investigation. Their commitment, persistence and tenacity in uncovering corporate malfeasance and making sense of a complex interplay of legal greed and environmental collapse, endangering people and planet, is worthy of special recognition.”
— Doc Edge Jury
“Plays like a Chinatown for the age of global warming — complete with mystery, political corruption and at the center of it, the question we've confronted since civilization began: who gets the water?”
— Adam McKay
Director of Don’t Look Up, Vice, & The Big Short