Babes, the brave little pigs.
Director Victor Kossakovsky think it was probably the first vegetarian child in the Soviet Union. It was because of a still traumatic experience for him. He was four years old, and his best friend in the country was a little pig, Vasya. One day, that friend happened to be served on chops. From those memories and from his commitment to animals, Gunda, a film that he had been thinking about for 20 years.
“I have always wanted to do a film about the creatures with whom we share the Earth, without underestimating or humanizing them, without sentimentality or vegan propaganda”, he explains him in his notes. In that spirit he filmed Gunda, the story of the sow that gives the film its title.
In the first scene, Gunda gives birth to a litter of piglets that come out and climb among all of them to get to suckle. The camera, in a beautiful black and white, silent, stealthy, with great respect, follows them closely in their first steps and walks in the open field, in their games. There is no music, no words, just the sounds of the pigs. It is not a documentary without more. Gunda's is a fictional story, inspired by very real events on a daily basis. With a final twist...
Gunda and the little rebel.
Kossakovsky says that he had the film clear when he met Gunda on a farm in Norway. “In the first minute, at the first farm, we opened the door and Gunda came towards me. He looked at me and it was like he was talking to me,” tells the respected filmmaker for his previous documentaries* (Long Live the Antipodes!, Aquerela).* “Gunda chose me, not me her. We met for a reason." There was: "We had our Meryl Streep."
The director shot the entire Gunda story on that farm, but he also toured others like the Gaia Sanctuary, in Caprodon (Girona), in the heart of the Pyrenees. “His initial idea for him was to make a trilogy, the story of a sow, a hen and a cow, and he was looking for locations for the rest of the animals,” he says. Coke Fernandez, one of the founders of this vegan rescue and recovery center for animals victims of exploitation, mistreatment or abandonment.
Gunda, the porcine Meryl Streep.
The movie stayed in one. From Gunda and her piglets, she goes on to teach the hens and the cows. The first cow scene is exciting. They run, down the meadow, when they open the doors. Then I move on to short, emotional shots. These last protagonists are those of the Gaia Sanctuary. "They were shooting for a few days in the summer of 2018," Coque tells us.
"The film has enormous sensitivity," he continues. “Despite the simplicity of the plot, the story of an animal does not need music, voiceover, or words. The message is very powerful. because the final scene is devastating and it does not need to show cruel scenes of slaughterhouses or mistreatment. Only for empathy that you can feel seeing it, you already understand it”, concludes Coque.
Gunda's piglets.
For Kossakosvky art, cinema, is above the message. That is what filmmakers and authors from all over the world have valued, from Paul Thomas Anderson to Alfonso Cuarón, Gus Van Sant or Lynne Ramsay. Although the first who saw the value of Gunda was joaquin phoenix who, after experiencing the film, decided to join as executive producer. “I had never seen anything like it, so it was an honor to support it like this,” has said the actor, whom Kossakosvky's team contacted after hearing his pro-animal speech when collecting the Oscar.
“I understand that Victor is an artist and has created this film to be experienced, but for me there is a very strong message behind it,” Phoenix said in an interview with the US premiere of Gunda. “It is for that people relate to animals as they do with their dog. They understand the value of their dog or cat, they understand that they have unique personalities and they share videos of them. But for some reason, there's a disconnect when it comes to food."
For both Phoenix and Kossakosvky, Gunda is a “warning, a wake-up call ” the conscience of the human being towards the animals. But they insist on not wanting it to look like "vegan propaganda", it's just art. A pig farm turned into art that excites… and perhaps makes you think.
The first walk.