Autrement (avec des Légumes)
Directed by
A reflection on our power to change things with an experience of citizenship that develops new models of collaboration between consumers and farmers. Setting out from her own ethical purchasing group, the director follows the local branches of a dynamic network that leads her from Brussels to Zagreb and a meeting with Community-supported Agriculture (CSA), a movement brimming with vitality. By reinventing the bond that connects them, consumers and food producers give life to an alternative way of consuming food, with a short supply chain and respectful of nature. Through food, something that regards us all, the CSA model returns the human being back to the center of economic exchange to offer an affirmative reply to the question: in our own small way, can we become actors of change?
When I’m making a film, what interests me is to shoot experiences in the place where I live, Brussels, and question its utopias. Here I set off from an episode in which I was involved first-hand, a very simple experience that subtly changed my way of consuming, not to mention my bond with the world. This came from my awareness that I wasn’t the only one to be keen to rediscover quality food and support small-scale production with a short supply chain. We’ve seen many films exposing the direction our agrifood system is taking.
Faced with this general sense of impotence, it seemed important to me to make a documentary that came up with solutions and restored human beings to the center of change. Agriculture and food are the pillars on which bonds within a community are forged. The number of suicides among farmers and the demise of farming are an urgent cause for concern today. As is the agrifood industry, which monopolizes the market and delivers food that poisons us. Problems are systemic and we consumers are at the heart of the system: I would say that our behaviors hugely influence the way the world works. When we understand that we are the world, then we’ll be able to become agents of change. The film doesn’t follow specific characters but the lives of different networks and citizens’ experiences that provide a fertile terrain for the world of tomorrow.
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Creative Europe Media Program. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.