The True Cost

It opens with the question of where cheap clothing comes from and follows the chain to the end: sewing floors in Bangladesh, cotton fields in India, strikes in Cambodia, shopping malls in America. Andrew Morgan directed. The documentary's starting point is the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in 2013 and the deaths of more than a thousand workers. The film explains the production model called fast fashion: more seasons, lower prices, shorter use. That every reduction in price is paid for at the bottom of the chain is the centre of the argument. The cotton section is the harshest: dependence on seed and pesticide, farmer suicides in India, and human health failing along with the soil. Its weak part is the solutions; having built the problem in detail, it leaves the way out largely to individual consumer choice. It had wide resonance in the fashion industry when it appeared and became teaching material at universities. Who it is for: viewers interested in supply chains and critiques of consumption. Who it is not for: anyone expecting balanced presentation; the film is openly partisan.