The Price of Sugar
Producer/Director/Writer – Bill Haney
Writer/Editor – Peter Rhodes
Co-Producer – Eric Grunebaum
In Distribution, 2007
When a charismatic Spanish priest arrives in the Dominican Republic, he’s warned against entering the sugar plantations where most of his parishioners live. Breaking a centuries old taboo, he discovers shocking examples of modern-day slavery intrinsic to the global sugar trade.
On an island known for tropical beauty, tourists flock to escape winter and relax with little knowledge that just a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are toiling away in unseen plantations harvesting sugarcane – most of which ends up in the United States. Cutting cane by machete, they work 14 hour days, 7 days a week frequently without access to decent housing, electricity, clean water, education, healthcare and adequate nutrition. Often they are stateless, with neither Dominican nor Haitian identity and virtually invisible in the eyes of the law.
The Price of Sugar follows Father Christopher Hartley as he organizes some of this hemisphere’s poorest people, challenging powerful interests profiting from their work. Deemed “extraordinarily compelling and powerful” by renowned author Edwidge Danticat, this film raises key questions about where the products we consume originate, at what human cost they are produced and ultimately, where our responsibility lies. Narrated by Paul Newman.
This film received The Audience Award, South by Southwest Film Festival; Best Human Rights Watch Award, International Black Docufest; Witness Award Honorable Mention, Silverdocs Film Festival; and was an Official Selection for Docuweek Showcase.