The Grab

Registration for this film online will be closed on December 4. Tickets will be available for purchase onsite at Bay Street Theater.

DIRECTOR: Gabriela Cowperthwaite

PRODUCERS: Nathan Halverson, Amanda Pike, Blye Pagon Faust, Nicole Rocklin, Gabriela Cowperthwaite

EDITOR: Davis Coombe

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jonathan Ingalls

At first it seemed like an isolated incident—the 2013 sale of Smithfield Foods, which controls a quarter of the U.S. pork supply, to a Chinese company. But further investigative reporting dug up similar resource grabs by other nations. The Smithfield revelation led Nathan Halverson of The Center for Investigative Reporting and his colleagues to follow a trail of money and resources and to probe into the covert actions of the world’s most powerful countries as they gobble up precious land and vital resources in other nations.

Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s films often deal with social, cultural and environmental issues relating to real- life events. She became seasoned at cultivating whistleblowers and uncovering secrets in her 2013 documentary Blackfish, which brought major changes to SeaWorld and is one of the highest grossing documentaries of all time. Blackfish was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for Best Documentary. At the film’s festival debut at Toronto in September, she told the audience that she had many opportunities to tell stories after the success of Blackfish - but this is the one she had to tell.