THE PLOT THUS FAR
Who controls the future of your food? GMO OMG explores the systematic corporate takeover and potential loss of humanity’s most precious and ancient inheritance: seeds. Director Jeremy Seifert investigates how loss of seed diversity and corresponding laboratory assisted genetic alteration of food affects his young children, the health of our planet, and freedom of choice everywhere. GMO OMG follows one family’s struggle to live and eat without participating in an unhealthy, unjust, and destructive food system. In GMO OMG, the encroaching darkness of unknown health and environmental risks, chemical toxins, and food monopoly meets with the light of a growing global movement to take back what we have lost. Has the global food system been irrevocably hijacked? Is there still time to reclaim its purity, protect biodiversity and save ourselves?
WHAT WE THOUGHT
“GMO OMG” is staged as a documentary attempt to answer questions about how GMOs impact kids. While the director takes his kids on a road trip to figure out what’s going on, one has to wonder if we’re starting to watch a documentary with a Michael Moore level slant. When the kids start playing in hazmat suits among a corn field, one has to wonder if it is in good taste. That being said, I’m glad that there is a voice talking about the benefits of GMOs. They do allow for pesticides to be used more effectively and a greater & cheaper produce yield to be gained.
Genetically Modified items have become a necessary evil, but Seifert spends most of the documentary seeing if their impact can be rolled back. If they are rolled back, then how are we going to feed the world? Not everyone is in a growth climate or politically stable environment that allows for it. So many documentaries like this are so eager to push First World plight that they don’t realize that these things were created to keep kids in poorer countries from starving. But, I guess that’s easy to gloss over.
The DVD comes with bonus interviews, a trailer and Chipotle’s short film “The Scarecrow” as the special features. The Dolby 5.1 and 2.0 tracks are strong enough. Still, it’s typical A/V Quality for a documentary. Even the transfer has that standard flat sheen. In the end, I’d recommend a stream to the curious.
RELEASE DATE: 07/22/2014