“Gunda is a sow who lives on a farm in Norway. When award-winning documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky first visits her, she has just given birth to a litter of piglets, and his patient camera watches as they grasp for her milk and take their tentative, teetering steps into a new world. This remarkable intimacy extends and evolves, building into an unprecedented portrait of animal life—encompassing herds of cows and curious, uncooped chickens—that brings us uncommonly close to these creatures, and manages to express their consciousness without overtly anthropomorphizing them. Using stark, transcendent black and white cinematography and the farm’s ambient soundtrack, Kossakowsky invites the audience to slow down and experience life as his subjects do, taking in their world with a magical patience and an other worldly perspective. Visionary in its simplicity, wonder, and urgency, Gunda asks us to meditate on the mystery of animal consciousness, and reckon with the role humanity plays in it. Executive Produced by Joaquin Phoenix.” -NYFF
Screening as part of Museum Films’ May Spotlight on New Scandinavian Cinema.
