A women’s coffee collective is at the heart of Leslie Chilcott’s documentary

Dubai had a rare cinematic treat recently when one of the biggest names in global documentary filmmaking flew into town for a pair of exclusive screenings and Q&A sessions at The Scene Club for her latest film, A Small Section of the World.

Lesley Chilcott’s name may not be as recognisable as the likes of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, but as a producer on Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for “Superman” and It Might Get Loud – all of which sit proudly among the top 100 grossing documentaries of all time – she is well-known.

A Small Section of the World marks Chilcott’s feature-length directorial debut, and she was in Dubai courtesy of OSN and the Sundance Channel to screen the movie ahead of its regional television premiere, alongside It Might Get Loud, on Sundance on February 7.

A Small Section of the World tells the story of a group of Costa Rican women who revolutionised the coffee industry when they set up a women’s coffee-producing collective following the departure of their husbands and sons to look for work in cities or neighbouring countries after the price of coffee collapsed in the mid 1990s.

Chilcott and her husband own a farm in Costa Rica but were completely unaware of La Asociación de Mujeres Organizadas de Biolley / The Organized Women’s Association of Biolley (Asomobi) until an unlikely chain of events was set in motion by the Italian coffee giant Illy.

Original article by Chris Newbould

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A women’s coffee collective is at the heart of Leslie Chilcott’s documentary