There is also a scene where coffee farmers pray to God for a higher price, which was filmed at the Negele Gorbitu Cooperative, located near Irgachefe in the Abaya woreda of the Borena Zone.

The film also includes footage of the New York Board of Trade, a commodity-trading floor in New York City, where the "C" international benchmark price of coffee is set each business day based on supply and demand, and explores the effects that these international prices (which by 2006 were at an all-time low) have on Ethiopian coffee growers.

These scenes stand in stark contrast to the footage of the impoverished conditions faced by the Ethiopian coffee farmers and their families.

The meeting with Tadesse Meskela, the manager of Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, was a decisive moment in the production of the film.

Unprecedented, that year developing countries refused to be forced into signing agreements that were against their interests, and the WTO talks completely collapsed.

[5] Black Gold has been released in the cinema and on DVD in over 40 countries: in the UK (Dogwoof), US (California Newsreel), Canada (Mongral Media), Australia (Madman), Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Japan.

Black Gold went on to be seen in over 60 international film festivals including London, Rome, Berlin, Melbourne, Hong Kong, and Rio de Janeiro and has secured major broadcast deals around the world including Channel 4 (UK), PBS/Independent Lens (US), Documentary Channel (Canada), NHK (Japan), and Al-jazeera (Middle East).

[31][32] As the film became more and more popular, Starbucks flew Tadesse and four other African coffee producers to their Seattle headquarters for a weekend conference, which was seen by many as a PR stunt.