Finding North at Sundance Film Festival

Finding North at Sundance Film Festival

27 April, 2012
by: Naima Khan

Naima Khan reviews Finding North, one of the most shocking documentaries at Sundance London.

This unforgettable journalistic documentary about rapidly increasing hunger in America is an eye-opener for sure, but directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush miss a key trick that's essential for an effective persuasive documentary: show us, don't tell us. 

For the most part it works brilliantly, like an newspaper article on film it uses a series of intimate human stories to reveal the extent of poverty experienced by a rapidly increasing number of Americans who can't afford the most basic fruits and vegetables, especially when processed foods come so much cheaper. 

We see children who can't focus in school, single parents who survive on food stamps and teachers who have to introduce their students to melons because they've never tasted them before. We also see charts and diagrams that deftly hammer home the idea of the world's richest country ignoring its poorest citizens to satisfy its economic interests. While this is all consistently fascinating and horrifying by turns, it's also very formulaic filmmaking. 

However, Jacobsen and Silverbush do look outwardly from the individuals they begin their film with to paint a picture of America in crisis with the words of illuminating academics like food politics writer Marion Nestle and author of Stuffed and Starved, Raj Patel, to provide the most concise and frightening discussion of the relationship between hunger and obesity. Patel calls them neighbours as both are  consequences of a lack of food choices. He also discusses terms like “food insecurity” (when a person doesn't know where or when their next meal is coming from) and together, the experts, the victims and activists like Jeff  Bridges – who also features - make a great case for policy change. 

But as the directors take us back to food insecure American citizens so they can tell us about how they suffer, the talking heads start to lose their desired effect. Once we've seen the inadequate homes and the short-term solution food banks, there's no need to get an elementary school kid to repeatedly tell us how hungry she is. It undermines the excellent journalism that runs throughout this documentary and turns it periodically into an almost tabloid-like human interest story. But Jacobsen and Silverbush know their stuff and aside form being a little wordy, their documentary is thorough, multifaceted and utterly compelling.

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Naima Khan