Coffee is a universal experience enjoyed by billions of people on a daily basis and is part of an industry worth over $80 billion a year. But the people behind the product are in crisis with millions of growers fast becoming bankrupt. Nowhere more evident is this paradox than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee.

Black Gold is a new movie that aims to forced us, as western consumers, to question some of our basic assumptions about our consumer lifestyle and its interaction with the rest of the world:

Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.

But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.

Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.

Against the backdrop of Tadesse's journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world's coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.

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