La Loi de la banane

In 19th century Central America, a few entrepreneurial cowboys built an empire that enslaved populations and corrupted governments for over 100 years. The United Fruit Company thrived on unregulated capitalism; this film tells its story and that of its pioneers who feared neither God nor Man... Until the 1970s, a multinational set up a monopoly by combining violence, repression, corruption, environmental destruction and a formidable marketing machine. It turned an unknown fruit into an instrument of fortune and domination. The saga of a handful of conquerors who built an empire in Central America and invented the methods of one of the very first multinationals. A dramatic tale of cynical adventurers, of visionaries of a modern and crippling capitalism, told like a Western. Beneath the story lies the model of a multinational society that is still in operation today, and which leading economists analyze in the film. (Arte)