X
- 2024
- Magnolia Pictures
- 1 h 42 m
- 2024
- Magnolia Pictures
- 1 h 42 m
Summary Quietly and seemingly out of sight, governments, financial investors, and private security forces are dividing up the world’s last remaining food and water resources. Communities are forced to stand by as their aquifers are sucked dry, and land they have owned for generations is grabbed from under their feet. As the scale of the run-on n...
Directed By: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Written By: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
- 2024
- Magnolia Pictures
- 1 h 42 m
- 2024
- Magnolia Pictures
- 1 h 42 m
The Grab
60
8.5
Where to Watch
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Summary Quietly and seemingly out of sight, governments, financial investors, and private security forces are dividing up the world’s last remaining food and water resources. Communities are forced to stand by as their aquifers are sucked dry, and land they have owned for generations is grabbed from under their feet. As the scale of the run-on n...
Directed By: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Written By: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Where to Watch
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 7 Critic Reviews
60
57% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
43% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 7 Critic Reviews
60
57% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
43% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
The big picture here is so elusive and vast that it helps Cowperthwaite to have a few intrepid investigators to follow, letting their research drive the shape of the film (which, when you unpack it, must have been one hell of a task to structure).
The Grab makes a clear choice to conclude not just with doomsaying, but with a call to action and a look at the things that can still be done to avert a global crisis.
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 4 User Ratings
8.5
75% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
25% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
User Score
Universal Acclaim
Based on 4 User Ratings
8.5
75% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
25% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
The Grab is more informative than polemical, and plays as a dry — sometimes suspenseful, often fact-packed — treatment of the subject.
Its topic is unquestionably a crucial issue for our age and its approach to that topic both has journalistic rigor and represents a thoroughly admirable depiction of journalistic rigor at a moment at which we put too little value on such things.
Both an overstimulated multimedia lecture and an anxiety-stoking conspiracy thriller, “The Grab” urges viewers to follow the money, look at the big picture, and so on.
What “The Grab” doesn’t do quite well is sell its argument or weave its many disparate, admirably reported discoveries into a graspable whole.
Halverson is too far on the deep end to provide us with digestible storytelling, and Cowperthwaite, who spends the movie jumping in nonlinear fashion from one year to the next, is in no rush to make the larger picture easier to see.
Sometimes a story is so big and involved that it’s difficult to get a handle on it. That can be quite a challenge for even the most adept documentarians and investigative reporters, no matter how eager or adept they may be in taking on such an ambitious project. And that, unfortunately, is the case with the latest offering from director Gabriela Cowperthwaite in her eight-year-long collaboration with journalist Nathan Halverson of The Center for Investigative Reporting. In essence, the film seeks to identify and characterize the new flashpoints underlying emerging geopolitical conflicts. Just as those in recent years have been driven by the compulsion to secure valuable energy supplies, today’s budding battlegrounds are once again tied to acquiring access to precious resources – in this case, food and water, along with the aquifers, agricultural land and processing facilities needed to yield these commodities. Evidence of the desperate, growing need for obtaining these materials has already begun to surface – albeit not always overtly – in such incidents as the Arab Spring and even the War in Ukraine. And, because of this developing crisis, those interested in locking down these resources have started scrambling to acquire them, primarily clandestinely, in regions where they’re most plentiful. These efforts have been spearheaded by multinational corporations and global financial institutions in cooperation with countries that are experiencing, or have historically experienced, critical food and water shortages, such as China, Russia, Venezuela and the nations of the Middle East. And, to help ensure the success of these ventures, they have enlisted the support of mercenary muscle to achieve their goals. High-profile targets, primarily in Africa and even parts of the US, have come under growing scrutiny, unscrupulously grabbed from their rightful owners and leaving them destitute as a result. Needless to say, this is an incredibly complicated story, one that’s difficult to tell, and, regrettably, that’s somewhat apparent in the finished product. While the work of Cowperthwaite and Halverson is undoubtedly sincere, having brought a great deal of previously buried information to light, it’s nearly impossible to relate this complex narrative in a concise and coherent manner. Given the many story threads involved and the well-camouflaged structures that have been set up to keep the truth and its principal participants concealed, it’s a genuine challenge to intelligibly expose the overarching nature of this highly convoluted big picture. Some elements are thus underdeveloped or left incomplete, making this film an often-frustrating watch. That’s unfortunate considering the importance of this story, one that has been largely flying below the radar and certainly deserves to be more widely exposed and detailed. With that said, though, “The Grab” represents a valuable start, and one can only hope there will be more releases like this that manage to dig deeper and discover more. It’s also heartening that the picture addresses some of the victories that have come about in combatting this issue, particularly those that have benefitted Africans who have been subjected to what is essentially a new form of continental colonization. In an age where increasing social and political volatility is arising due to a failure to effectively address the world’s hunger, it’s essential that we become aware of this issue before it gets out of hand and leads us down a path we don’t dare pursue.
Report
Production Company
Center for Investigative Reporting Studios,
Impact Partners,
Rocklin/Faust
Release Date Jun 14, 2024
Duration 1 h 42 m
Genres
Awards
BendFilm Festival
• 3 Wins & 3 Nominations
San Diego International Film Festival
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
Mountain Film Festival
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations