I was lucky enough to score a ticket tonight to a screening of Ana Sofia Joanes’ new movie Fresh. I am particularly eager to see how the movie is received both critically and popularly, because I am working on similar material as Ana Sofia, but more importantly because I am working in the visual medium. Certainly there has always been food on TV and in film, and in recent years, there has been an explosion of really food –related content on television what with the Food Network, Top Chef, Iron Chef and others. But this film, and my show are different than all that content.

I am very happy to report that Fresh is an excellent, and entertaining and uplifting movie. It is beautifully produced, has terrific pacing, and ultimately succeeds at telling a great story. And it does it in a medium that is perfectly suited to the food world.

The movie opens with images of processed food at a checkout counter. A simple image that resonates throughout our culture. We’ve all been there. We’ve all stood at that counter, with our overflowing shopping carts of packaged goods being rung up. But when we see these images in Ana Sofia’s film, we understand what she is telling us, quite simply, that this is really how bad it is. Our ways are damaged, our habits unsustainable, and our approach to food is ready to be radically altered.

Ana Sofia’s film succeeds on multiple levels, but first and foremost, it succeeds because it successfully utilizes the demands of the medium. It is the simple, quiet, unadorned visuals in this film that tell the story: Meat unwrapped in cellophane at a supermarket checkout line, a crop dusting plane spraying a field, 6 enormous combines driving through a horizon full of corn, new born chicks being tossed on a feedlot floor with such violence, such detachment from the people involved in the labor. These are the images that resonate.

The film moves seamlessly from its opening images to the story of farmer Joel Salatin, famous for his appearance in Michael Pollan’s bestselling book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Salatin, one of the country’s leading advocates of pasture-based farming methods, is now officially a cult figure. To see him at work in his fields, visiting his pigs as they “express their pigginess,” or herding his enormous cattle, gives us the visual accompaniment to Pollan’s words. It’s a magical moment, and one that I suspect Ana Sofia knew would satisfy her audience’s expectations almost immediately.

Joel’s story is told interspersed with short interviews with conventional chicken farmers in Iowa, Pollan, and others. Fans of Pollan won’t be disappointed with his contributions to the film, which though short, are chock full of one-liners such as “nature doesn’t like monocultures.” But its not the grandiose scenes with Joel or Pollan that steal the show. The interviews with the conventional poultry farmers, the Fox’s, is heartbreaking. Seemingly honest and decent people, when asked what is in the feed they give their chickens, their blank stares and shaking heads are worth a thousand words.

How could we be this far done this road? Where a farmer doesn’t even know what he’s feeding his animals? This is lunacy. One even feels pity for these poor people. Compare their ignorance of what they feed their thousands of chickens with Joel, picking ten types of grass off his pasture, naming each one, holding them in his bare hands. He knows what nourishes his herds.

The film moves from Joel’s Swope, VA farm to showcase a few other ambassadors of sustainability, all giving their own personal brand of wisdom into the cauldron that the film builds. The movie is heavy on ideas too: we are shown an economist talking about how industrialization has led to the “elimination of risk” in farming enterprises. Pollan talking about how monoculture farms (farms where only one or two species of plant or animal are grown) create their own problems. A quick view of a manure lagoon on an industrial hog farm quickly explains.

The film ends with a long segment on the urban farmer Will Allen, who runs a farm in the middle of Milwaukee. Allen is the heart of the film. His vision for repairing the American food system is holistic, sensible, just. He talks about social justice and food justice in the same sentence as increasing employment and attracting young people into the movement. This gentle giant who talks of “The New Black Gold",” walking around a group of people with a giant handful of beautiful black soil. He talks about beneficial bacteria, and his best friends are the worms that aid his soil. Because as Allen and Pollan and Salatin will tell you, its all about the soil.