Payback

Year: 2012
Country: CANADA, USA, ALBANIA
Run Time: 86 minutes

Based off Margaret Atwood's highly praised book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth—a collection of essays about systems of justice and reparation—Jennifer Baichwal's PAYBACK illustrates the director's eminent approach of adapting other artists' work into the medium of film. Narrated by Margaret Atwood throughout, the film is a thought-provoking global case study of the idea of debt—both how we think about it internally and societally and how our views of it change how it works. Through examinations of punishment and incarceration, the overwhelming gap between the rich and the poor, and corporate corruption, the documentary conceptualizes controversial cases of debt, including the massive BP oil spill scandal and the presence of modern slavery on the farms of the Pacific Tomato Growers. Poignant and relevant, PAYBACK investigates our sense of fairness and the idea that human civilization is inherently unjust. (In English and Albanian with subtitles) –M.M.

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