HARVESTING DECEMBER 2026
THE
BREADFRUIT
DOCUMENTARY
A tree, its people,
and the complex business of love.
The breadfruit outlasted voyages, empires, and hard centuries, but always inspired humans to build community.
We are now at a crossroads and if it turns into raw material for industrialized food production, we stand to lose far more than its nourishment.
THE OFFICIAL TRAILER
the story starts here
The story continues past the trailer.
A short letter from the film every few weeks, screenings notifications, milestones, field stories, voices from the edit, real-time progress.
JOIN THE BREADFRUIT UNIVERSE
INSIDE THE FILM
Three thousand years ago, Pacific peoples loaded breadfruit saplings into canoes and carried them across the ocean. It fed their descendants through time. Then the breadfruit was carried to the Caribbean as food for enslaved people. In time, now free, Caribbean people came to love the tree. Now the breadfruit is becoming enjoyed across the whole world.
Will this threaten its well-being and its capacity to nurture those who have treasured it so long?
DIRECTOR
Daniel Tomei
WRITER
Elaine Savory
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Richard Ashbaugh
RUNTIME
Approximately 80 minutes
MAIN LANGUAGE
English
OTHER LANGUAGES
Spanish
French
Pohnpeian
Six years of filming. Ten countries. Over sixty-five voices.
THE VOICES OF THE FILM
There is no singular voice that can summarize this tree; its story is scattered across islands and cultures.
The film gathers the people who each carry a piece of it. From growers planting harvests they may never taste, entrepreneurs turning its fruit into food for their communities, chefs and distillers testing what it can still become, scientists reading its chemistry, historians tracing its crossings, and newer nurturers of breadfruit in Africa, to chiefs and carvers who never needed it explained.
They all come from different worlds, and the one thing that unites them is their pure love for the tree.
FROM THE WRITER
"At its heart, The Breadfruit Documentary asks how we might live differently if we listened more closely to what this tree and the communities that have kept it alive already know. How to maintain community and to respect another form of life which has helped humans flourish from long ago."
Elaine Savory
To much of the world, breadfruit is a discovery.
To the people in this film, it has been here all along.
As its moment arrives, will they be the ones who benefit?
FROM THE DIRECTOR
"I spent six years following this tree because every time I thought I understood it, someone in another community showed me I didn't. A forester in Saint Vincent told me that you sit under trees you never planted, and you miss them when they're gone. A carver in Hawai'i showed me the fruit's pattern still alive in the grain of a surfboard. I set out to make a film about a tree and the people who love it. They kept turning it toward a harder question, what the world's new hunger for it may do to it."
DANIEL TOMEI - PRODUCER / DIRECTOR
JOIN THE BREADFRUIT
UNIVERSE
Follow the film as it's finished and stay up to date with the global release, screenings, and film festivals.
Follow the film as it's finished and stay up to date with the global release, screenings, and film festivals.
outreach partners
If your work lives near this tree, it belongs here.
Join the partnership.
