Ethical lessons through film

Feature-length documentaries in ACCA film festival challenge business models in large corporations.   

---Dean Gurden, journalist.

For this year’s celebration of Global Ethics Day, ACCA Hong Kong hosted a virtual film festival, with participants invited to join a Netflix Watch Party for the screening, followed by panel discussions on Zoom.

Here are reviews of the films being shown: Rotten: Troubled Water and Bleeding Edge:

Troubled Water

If you’re still buying bottled water and haven’t acquired a trendy refillable bottle yet, this documentary could change your habits faster than you can say ‘Nestlé’.

Indeed Nestlé appears to be the main target of Troubled Water. Americans drink 42 gallons of bottled water a year each despite the country’s toilets having better quality water than a third or more of the world has access to every day. Nestlé and a handful of other massive corporations are doing very well from a ‘product’ that didn’t even exist 40 years ago.

The film is awash with fascinating facts. For example:

• Globally we consume 100bn gallons of bottled water a year.
• The US market alone is valued at US$35bn.
• Nestlé has numerous wells in Michigan pumping out billions of gallons of freshwater a year. Each well licence costs the company US$200 a year.

The film also looks at the bottled water market in Nigeria – Lagos in particular. Of the city’s population of 21 million, the film claims that 19 million have no access to government or municipal water due to infrastructure mismanagement. While many are left without clean drinking water, the likes of Nestlé, Pepsi, and Coca Cola are profiting from selling bottled water to those who can afford it.

Troubled Water only touches on the environmental damage caused by this trend, but it will still make you think twice about picking up that next bottle of water.

The Bleeding Edge

The documentary film The Bleeding Edge tackles the US medical device industry, which is worth around $300bn per year. It kicks off with a quote from Jeanne Lenzer’s book, The Danger Within Us: ‘Over the past 10 years, nearly 70 million Americans have been implanted with medical devices.’

You’d like to think that’s a good thing and that medical innovations are improving all our lives, but it’s the regulation of these devices and the incredibly powerful industry that produces them that this documentary sets out to expose.

The documentaries aim to inspire discussion on the way we do business, the opportunities for change arising from the pandemic, and the adaptations required to secure a sustainable future

There was an explosion of fraudulent devices back in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s so under the Medical Device Regulation Act 1976 they were brought under the control of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

However, the filmmakers suggest that the FDA, rather than protecting US citizens, is more focused on the interest of the manufacturers, which are said to be exploiting a legal loophole. (If manufacturers can establish that their device is substantially equivalent to another device that is already on the market, they can bypass the pre-market approval process.)

From metal hip replacements causing cobalt poisoning to the use of hernia mesh in pelvic floor treatments in women that have gone disastrously wrong, The Bleeding Edge is a tough watch at times. The courage and fortitude of the people affected (predominantly women) is inspiring.

As usual, it’s all about money, with even some doctors and surgeons being implicated alongside the medical device manufacturers.

Overall, the two documentaries aim to inspire discussion on the way we do business, the new opportunities for change as a result of the pandemic, and the adaptations required to secure a sustainable future.