Gunda

From the first frame itself, Gunda promises a cinematically pleasing world. With the use of monotone and natural farm sounds in the background, this film is soothing, engaging and enraging at the same time. The film follows a slow, consistent pace throughout. To say Kossakovsky’s camera work is excellent is an understatement: you simply want to sit back and enjoy the aesthetic framing. But the narrative shocks you at places and keeps you hooked on the film. 

The intimate lives of the animals and birds are captured in such detail that you forget you are watching them through a screen. You are being taken into their world and their experiences. You can’t help but grow attached to the sow and her piglets, watching them grow and rooting for them to survive. Or the birds stepping out of a cage, calculated and careful at first, hopeful later. Their freedom feels like your own. You want to run in open fields with the cows, celebrate the liberation. The film feels like a wild carousel of emotions, evoking sympathy, compassion, hope and guilt. At moments you are taken aback, shocked, heartbroken and helpless but also reflecting and reconsidering your own food choices.

Unlike most documentaries on the meat industry, Gunda is not preachy - far from it. It simply stays in the moment, exposing us to the lives of the animals and birds before they turn into pork, chicken and beef. It is perhaps the skill of letting the camera linger on these animals for a long period of time that makes it so much more appealing. 

The film avoids promoting any activism nor does it ask one to give up eating meat. It simply stays, brings forth the ‘life’ behind the food we consume and does so in an artful, appealing way. One of the few films that doesn’t target the human side of meat consumption or the role that corporations play, but offers an insight into the existence of the ones who suffer the most. A poetic, heartbreaking and important film.

Written by Nikita Zankar