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C Story / Emily Sujka Photo / St Remio
The Coffee

Lifeline

The Real Cost of Coffee, one of only four documenta- So, why Rwandan coffee? What is so special about it?
ries to have reached the 2024 Best Documentary Short What are the lessons that Rwanda can teach the coffee
category at the Cannes World Film Festival “Remembering community? What lessons in sustainability can then be
the Future” awards, begins with a Rwandan proverb and translated to coffee growing regions around the world? For
ends with what is at stake. It is what can be and what is... reasons soon to be made clear, any exploration of Rwandan
unless we change it. Produced by Melbourne-based St Re- coffees demands dialogue, meaning directly connecting
mio Coffee, the film is a human-centric look at Rwandan with Trent, Julia, and Rwandan Agronomist, Daniel
coffee, featuring some of the efforts of Trent Knox and Hategekimana. The cost of ignoring Rwandan farms, their
Rwanda’s conscripting the globe for the further work to still be done. al coffee economy relies on, is too great. In fact, no part of
Building Resilience in
growers, their pickers, and their harvesters, that the glob-
Julia Tink over the last nine years in Rwanda and crucially
the coffee supply chain is safe without genuine investment
Rwanda is characterized by a unique set of circumstances
that offer as much in the way of looking at coffee as of
versal renouncement of tokenistic action.
looking at grander models of sustainability. And, it was in the skeletal agriculture infrastructure as well as a uni-
Coffee Industry Julia founded Sustainable Transparent Rwanda Empower 83
with this weightier opportunity in mind that Trent and
Melbourne Impact Origin, or St Remio, in 2015, Rwanda
forever at its heart.

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