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Runoff is This Year’s Most Powerful and Important Food Movie

(SEE BELOW FOR MY INTERVIEW WITH THE FILMMAKERS.)

With the DARK Act heating up and the disastrous TPP close to approval, we are not far from the point where the government will allow uncontrolled contamination of organic farms from GMOs and mass exposure to super-toxic pesticides, not to mention GMO-labeling being declared illegal.

This means that our only remaining option to fight back and protect ourselves is for individual citizens to come together en masse to reject the propaganda of Monsanto, Dow, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and embrace organic.

But how do we accomplish this?

Documentaries such as Food Inc. and GMO OMG have done an excellent job of exposing the atrocities of industrial agriculture.

Yet, given where we are today, how much did they really move the needle, in terms of getting the mainstream — or the heartland — to change their mind about industrial farming and its impacts on our personal and environmental health?

We can’t say for sure, but the only thing we do know is that we have a long, long way to go, especially with the nation’s farmers — the people who are actually purchasing GMO seeds and toxic chemicals. The other thing to note is that when these documentaries were released, it may have been very difficult to get conventional farmers to even go see these pro-organic movies because they knew that their way of life was going to be attacked.

And that is precisely why we need to get behind and support Runoff.

Rather than taking a documentary approach, Runoff tells the (fictional) story of a woman desperate to save her family and farm when a giant chemical company comes to town. Viewers get a poignant and up-close look at Betty and Frank Freeman, and the moral decisions they face as the possibility of losing their home is just days away.

With a gorgeous Kentucky scenery, convincing performances by the entire cast, and a thrilling ending, writer/director Kimberly Levin does a masterful job of depicting the very real, frightening, and complicated struggles of a family in a depressed farmland community.

Taking this cinematic approach allows her to innocuously put forth highly charged topics such as antibiotic-filled milk, exposure to toxic chemicals, factory farms, 2,4-D and glyphosate, uninsured migrant workers, and crop dusters spraying pesticides on fields where children are roaming below.

With the movie holding up a mirror to this way of life without passing judgment, it is the hope that people — both farmers and non-farmers alike — will start to take stock of the choices they are making and think about doing otherwise.

Runoff is a very powerful movie that has the potential to open the eyes of many individuals — at a time when we need need it most.

The film is playing nationwide and click HERE for a complete list of screenings. Please go see this very important movie.

(This video below is a Periscope that I shot with Kimberly Levin, writer and director, and Kurt Pitzer, producer, of Runoff).