Cow is a 2021 British

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

Andrea Arnold Andrea Arnold, OBE (born 5 April 1961) is an English filmmaker and former actor. She won an Academy Award for her short film ''Wasp'' in 2005. Her feature films include ''Red Road'' (2006), ''Fish Tank'' (2009), and ''American Honey'' (2016), ...

, revolving around the life of a dairy cow. The film premiered at the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

on 8 July 2021.

Synopsis

The film, shot in ''

cinéma vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or high ...

''-style, portrays the life of a female dairy cow, called Luma, at Park Farm in

Kent, England Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces the ...

Production

had wanted to make a documentary revolving around an animal for years, and considered making one about a

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

, but ultimately kept coming back to a

cow Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...

because she found their lives "interesting to look at." The film follows a milking cow and her calf, with Arnold warning the farmers about the potential response their farm would receive once the film was released. Arnold wanted the audience to "see" the cow, with real feelings, as well as "show the aliveness of a nonhuman animal." Production took place over the course of several years, with post-production taking place while Arnold was editing the second season of '' Big Little Lies''. Arnold has further stated that the film was intended as a presentation of life, and is not political or vegan media. She has stated, "I'm not going to talk about that because I don’t want it to become about that." Rather, Arnold said "our relationship with the millions of non-human lives we use is very much part of our existence. I made Cow to invite engagement with that."

Release

''Cow'' had its world premiere at the

on 8 July 2021. Prior to,

MUBI Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...

acquired distribution rights to the film in the UK, Ireland and Turkey. That same month,

IFC Films IFC Films is an American film production and distribution company based in New York. It is an offshoot of IFC owned by AMC Networks. It distributes mainly independent films under its own name, select foreign films and documentaries under its S ...

acquired US distribution rights. It was also selected in 'Icon' section of

26th Busan International Film Festival The 26th Busan International Film Festival opened on October 6 at the Busan Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea with South Korean film '' Heaven: To the Land of Happiness'' by Im Sang-soo. Park So-dam and Song Joong-ki hosted the opening of the ...

and was screened on 11 October 2021.

Reception

In the UK, the film earned $28,790 from 34 theaters in its opening weekend. ''Cow'' has received critical acclaim. A review in ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publishe ...

'' described it as 'moving and uncomfortable'. It holds a 96% approval rating on

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on 99 reviews, with a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

of 7.6/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film holds a rating of 80 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

References

External links

* * * {{Andrea Arnold 2021 films 2021 documentary films British documentary films Documentary films about animals BBC Film films IFC Films films Films directed by Andrea Arnold 2020s English-language films 2020s British films