Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 31 May only

Katja Gauriloff / Ireland/Norway/Portugal/France/Finland /2012 / 75 min

Screening as part of the Take One Action! film festival’s “The World On Your Plate” season, Canned Dreams is a 30,000 kilometre journey through the eight countries required to produce a tin of ravioli. But more than that, it’s a reminder of the people behind the processed food that makes up so much of the British diet.

Canned Dreams takes the form of a series of monologues from the workers who produce this most mundane product. From a mother toiling in a Brazilian mine to an elderly Ukrainian millworker’s pleas that bread be respected, the Danish pig farmers whose affection for their charges is palpable to the Romanian abattoir worker who acknowledges that he must “sacrifice” these animals to provide for his family. All are filmed in the workplace, but they speak about their lives: their fears, memories, and hopes for the future.

It’s an affecting film, but fails somewhat as a call to action. It’s difficult for the layperson to judge industry standards, and the post-show discussion provides the only real illumination into the subject. The doubtless grim methods of food production, pale in comparison to the lives of the downtrodden workers. It paints such a relentlessly bleak and cheerless picture that by the time the film is over, the viewer feels just as disempowered as the labourers.