From set-up to close, a day at the farmers market is a whirlwind sensory feast

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Before store-bought produce reaches your table, it’s very likely gone on a long journey to get there. Many fruits and vegetables are washed in chlorine, stored for months, or coated in wax to ensure that they look ‘fresh’ while they sit on the grocery-store shelf. It may be hard for the average shopper to tell the difference between imported and local produce, but, to a farmers-market vendor, the difference is crystal clear. In this colourful documentary from 2006, the Croatian filmmaker Ana Hušman captures a full day of selling at Dolac market in Zagreb, Croatia. Hušman grabs fragments of conversations between vendors and customers, layering them over timelapse footage. As they sell the importance of local food, we see their piles of produce stack up and pare down. The viewer is also invited into the kitchen and shown, through stop-motion animation, traditional methods of preserving pears, blackberries and garlic.