Elisha and the Cacao Trees
2010 · 17m · Canada
Directed by Rohan Fernando
Genres: documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Thirteen-year-old Elisha, daughter of a Belizean cacao farmer, shows how cacao is grown and harvested before it becomes chocolate. Her school day and her dreams link a small village to children across North America who eat the final product.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a children's edutainment doc about chocolate supply chains—exactly the kind of consensus-friendly, well-meaning project that makes me want to scream. But then Elisha herself becomes the film, and suddenly you're watching something genuinely unsettling about the gap between her world and ours, which is maybe the opposite of what the filmmakers intended, which makes it interesting.
A formally assured entry in the tradition of cinema-vérité portraiture and development documentary, with careful attention to the rhythms of daily labor and the poetics of place—the school-to-harvest intercut demonstrates disciplined editing that honors both the child's interiority and the material conditions she inherits.
The genius move is letting Elisha's own narration—direct, unadorned, occasionally dreaming—carry the entire film rather than layering in explanatory voice-over or soundtrack manipulation; it's a single structural choice that transforms what could've been a well-intentioned lesson into something that actually respects the intelligence of everyone watching.