Why does India export grain to Switzerland while millions of people in India are starving? And why does Vienna waste enough bread every day to feed Austria's second city Graz in its entirety? Just a few examples of the many questions raised in an Austrian documentary We Feed the World. There are no quick and easy answers.

Director Erwin Wagenhofer registers and documents the abuse in the worldwide food industry without passing judgments or giving solutions. This results in a plethora of uncommented visual images of industrial processes: unsavoury pictures of fish with exploded eyes and decapitated chickens, but also more pleasant scenes of sun-drenched Romanian fields and traditional Breton fishing boats.

In between the pictures, a wide variety of experts give comments. Some provide surprising new insights. One of them is a Brazilian biologist, who explains how Europeans are eating the rain forest because we feed our chickens soya beans that have been produced in the region of the Brazilian rain forest. Another is UN nutritional expert Jean Ziegler, who observes that African farmers are starving, not because of insufficient food - enough is produced worldwide to feed twelve billion people - but because their products stand no chance against European goods dumped on the African market. The 'other side' is also given the opportunity to present its views. Solarium-tanned Peter Brabeck, CEO at Nestle, emphasises positive thinking. "The world is doing better than ever, let's not forget that", is his message to today's defeatists. A rather inappropriate point of view within the context of this film.

As far as the genre is concerned, We Feed the World is in the same category as recent American documentaries such as Supersize Me and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. But Wagenhofer's work is significantly less tendentious and aggressive. All those who appear in the film, participated voluntarily and were treated with respect. This approach works wonderfully well. The images themselves are clear enough for the public to cast harsh judgement on the food industry. Even without a dramatic voice-over, most viewers will probably leave their tasty industrial chicken for a while.