Food industry under scrutiny at Berlin film fest

By Erik Kirschbaum

BERLIN (Reuters) - Two documentary films showing at the Berlin film festival take a swipe at the international food industry, one of several aspects of big business that come in for criticism at the event this year.

Confessing his disdain for fast food before a gala screening of "Food, Inc.", festival director Dieter Kosslick included the two anti-agribusiness films in this year's festival and seems to have captured the public mood.

"I've been a Slow Food member for a long, long time," Kosslick told a packed Sunday audience of 1,500, referring to a global movement founded to challenge the spread of fast food.

"When I saw this film I was so shocked that I said 'It has to be in Berlin'," said Kosslick, who before the festival told a German parliamentary committee "Food, Inc." would be one of the its most important films.

The second film, "Terra Madre" (Mother Earth) made by Slow Food International, is about a meeting of 5,000 small organic food producers from around the world in Turin.

American film maker Robert Kenner's "Food, Inc." is a hard-hitting expose of the agribusiness.

It looks through the eyes of farmers, consumers and legislators, contrasting corporate images of red barns and white fences with factory farms and huge processing plants.

Kenner said he tried but failed to get the companies themselves -- such as Monsanto, Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods