Sunú

Americans aren't the only ones with a grudge against NAFTA. Filmmaker Teresa Camou's low-key yet revealing documentary Sunú takes viewers into the hardscrabble world of corn (or “maize”) growers in Mexico. The focus is not on factory farms that grow cheap yellow corn to be imported to the U.S. and sold back, after processing, to Mexican consumers (an ironic twist courtesy of trade agreements), but rather on the narrow world of indigenous family farmers in Mexico who raise, against great odds, multi-colored, healthy corn for their own consumption. While much of the story is told without comment or only a few words from the sometimes self-conscious farmers, the personal relationship between the people and their homegrown food source is clear and powerful. The farmers, their spouses, and children are all involved in growing corn to turn into tortillas—a huge part of their diet. This practice has gone on for eons, but as with many traditions regarding food, this one is under threat from climate change, an infestation of GMO seeds, and a consumer culture that has become so fixated on processed foods that the Mexican government regards hand-to-mouth family farmers as irrelevant. Sunú serves as both a celebration of our essential relationship with the Earth and a warning that we have ceded food production to corporations. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)