Canned Dreams

Beginning with a lonely woman who has given birth to a dozen children and is working in one of the largest open-pit mines in Brazil, CANNED DREAMS takes an eight-country journey across 30,000 km dissecting the processes of ingredients needed for a can of ravioli that ultimately ends up on the shelf of a Finnish grocery store. The real story isn’t how the pork, or beef, or tomatoes make it into the tin can being mined by a Brazilian mother, but of the people involved with the production and how, while separated by national borders, they all seem connected in their lives. The Danish pig farmer loves his charges but longs for a wife and children; the Portuguese tomato picker works only to provide a future for her daughter; the Polish beef farmer rues his ex-wife, but adores his kids. This could be a story of how any supermarket-packaged meal is made, but instead it’s a study – not just of how certain items are produced, but also of the very humanity that sacrifices to provide. Some scenes contain graphic animal imagery. (In Portuguese, Danish, Romanian, Ukranian, Polish, and Russian with subtitles) – T.W.