In the vastness of the living world, we share our planet with billions of farm animals. However, in industrialized societies we are conditioned to ignore the sentience of these animals, often regarded as a passive resource. Where his prior film Aquarela was a reminder of the fragility of human tenure on earth, in Gunda, master filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky offers a radically recalibrated moral universe, where encounters with a mother sow (the eponymous Gunda), two ingenious cows, and a scene-stealing, one-legged chicken, remind us of the inherent value of life for all beings. By returning a pig's gaze, listening to a cow's gentle lowing, or observing a chicken find its wings, Kossakovsky voids any pretension that we are unique in our capacity for emotion, consciousness or will. Immersed in these animals’ lives, lived to the full in joy and pain, it becomes inescapable that humankind must swiftly undertake the major changes necessary to end mass exploitation of our fellow creatures. Gunda is Kossakovsky’s deeply personal attempt to renew our vision of life and meditate on the mystery of all animal consciousness, including our own.
