The "The End of Poverty?" is a new film  produced  jointly by the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation and Cinema Libre Studio. It is directed and edited by Philippe Diaz. It was "An Official Selection” at the Cannes Film Festival this year. The film was the only documentary chosen as part of Critic's Choice week and the only one that will be granted extra time for a post-screening panel discussion. Only two other documentaries (of thousands submitted to the jury) will be screened at the festival. The mere fact of being selected is the "award." (In other words, the film will not be entered for specific awards at Cannes, such as the Palme d'Or.)

As a result of it selection by the Cannes Film Festival jury for presentation, "The End of Poverty?" will be guaranteed serious consideration at other film festivals. It will be submitted to at least two others over the next eight months before being released to cinemas between November 2008 and March 2009. It should be then be available on DVD.

The film, described by Reuter's correspondent Charles Masters as “An Inconvenient Truth for economics”  is approximately 1 hour 45 minutes. Its theme, according to diretor Diaz is that “they are poor because we are rich.” It traces the history of poverty in the developing nations to colonial policies that imposed European land tenure arrangements, deprived peasants of their land and created plantation economies, displaced internal trade with an economy that relied solely on exports of a few raw materials, attacked indigenous cultural practices, and destroyed industries that might have competed with European factories. Those historic practices have been perpetuated in the era of political independence with differential tariffs on processed goods that are four times higher on former colonies than on former colonizers. 

Private banks and the World Bank and IMF have encouraged developing nations to take on large amounts of debt to finance large projects that disproportionately benefit foreign companies engaged in resource extraction. Land tenure arrangements that grant privileges to American and European companies are sustained not only by corrupt governments, but also by the use of American military power in overthrowing governments that seek to extricate themselves from the system of neo-colonialism. Thus, poverty is revealed as the result of an extreme imbalance in the world, which allows those with power to extract economic surplus from nations with little power.

The film tells the story by interspersing interviews with American and European analysts with interviews with poor families and workers in Africa and Latin America. Thus, this film combines theoretical explanations of poverty with testimony by the poor themselves. 

The film is not an explanation of Georgist philosophy but rather attempts to convey much subtler Georgist themes (unjust colonial land tenure, the role of power in determining the beneficiaries of resource extraction, and trade imbalances plus debt that permanently keep poor nations in a state of underdevelopment) which it is hoped will be appreciated by a wide audience.