''Gunda'' (also known as ''Gunda: Mother, Pig'') is a 2020

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed, co-written, and co-edited by

Viktor Kossakovsky Viktor Kossakovsky (russian: Виктор Косаковский; born 19 July 1961) is a Russian documentary filmmaker. Early life Kossakovsky was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at the time Leningrad, U.S.S.R. He began his film career in ...

. The film follows the daily life of a pig, two cows, and a one-legged chicken.

Joaquin Phoenix Joaquin Rafael Phoenix (; né Bottom; born October 28, 1974) is an American actor. He is known for playing dark and unconventional characters in independent films. He has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academ ...

serves as an executive producer. The film had its world premiere at the

Berlin International Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the fest ...

on February 23, 2020. It was released in the United States on April 16, 2021, by Neon.

Synopsis

Shot in black-and-white and without dialogue, the film follows the daily life of Gunda — a sow and her piglets, two

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 ...

s, and a one-legged

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 adu ...

. A note during the credits indicates that the documentary was filmed in farms and sanctuaries in Norway, Spain, and the UK.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the

on February 23, 2020. Shortly after, Neon acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film. It screened at the

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, i ...

on September 19, 2020 and at the

Adelaide Film Festival The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF, formerly ADLFF) is film festival usually held for two weeks in mid-October in cinemas in Adelaide, South Australia. Originally presented biennially in March from 2003, since 2013 AFF has been held in October ...

in October 2020. The film was released in the United States on April 16, 2021.

Critical reception

''Gunda'' received positive reviews from film critics. It holds approval rating on review aggregator 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 50 positive and one negative review, with an average of . The site's critical consensus reads, "''Gunda'' takes an absorbingly meditative look at farm life from the animals' perspective, tacitly posing questions about our relationship to food along the way."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that 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 average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

reports a score of 89 out of 100, based on 13 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Writing for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

Manohla Dargis Manohla June Dargis () is an American film critic. She is one of the chief film critics for ''The New York Times''. She is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Career Before being a film critic for ''The New York Times'', ...

describes the documentary as "sublimely beautiful and profoundly moving". Similarly, Eric Kohn of ''

IndieWire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...

'' praised the documentary, describing it as "a visionary case for

veganism Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet (nutrition), diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is kn ...

in black and white." Guy Lodge of ''Variety'' says the film's "radiantly beautiful imagery and gently immersive storytelling aren’t in service of a single browbeating message, but a broader, holistic view of where we and the animals we rear, use and consume fit into a single circle of life."

References

External links

* * {{IMDb title, 11464016 2020 films 2020 documentary films Films about pigs Films about chickens Films about cattle Films set in Norway Films shot in Norway American documentary films Norwegian documentary films Neon (distributor) films American children's films British children's films Norwegian children's films Films set on farms Films without speech 2020s American films 2020s British films