Rawal has been a strong supporter of the local food movement, but he realized he knew very little about food production. He became curious about, “who exactly was producing these organic tomatoes. What were their conditions like? What were they paid?”

Now Rawal is releasing his third film, Food Chains, about just this topic. Produced by actors Eva Longoria and Forest Whitaker and directed by Rawal, Food Chains debuted at major film festivals this year, including the Berlinale Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival and opens for a limited theatrical run on Friday, November 21.

The documentary takes a deep look at the lives and working conditions of American farmworkers, paying particular attention to the case of workers in Immokalee, Florida, one of the largest tomato-producing regions in the U.S. Here, workers, mainly from Latin America, have endured deplorable working conditions, wage theft, and–in some cases—modern day slavery. It’s also the home to one of the most respected, important fights for food worker’s rights in the nation.

Food Chains presents viewers with an intimate portrayal of Immokalee’s farmworkers’ lives, and connects their plight to social justice, showing the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the group that has spent the last two decades campaigning for the workers rights and better wages. The film centers around a week-long fast for fair food CIW took part in in 20022, and the event serves as a lens on their wider work to create the Fair Food Program.

The latter is a farmworker- and consumer-driven initiative to increase farmworkers’ wages by a penny more a pound, and improve conditions in Florida. (Barry Estabrook wrote extensively about CIW’s work in his seminal book Tomatoland.) The film also looks at how the American supermarket industry operates and the way CIW has worked with everyone from Trader Joe’s to Walmart to enact change.