GUNDA filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky on bringing the interior life of animals to light in his remarkable documentary

There have been countless documentaries focused on the mistreatment of animals and the devastating environmental impact of relying on farmed animals as a primary food source, but no film has truly captured the interior lives of those creatures like Russian filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky’s remarkable new documentary, Gunda, executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix.

Shot in black and white, Gunda features no dialogue and uses only the natural sounds captured by Kossakovsky’s animal subjects, including the tituar Gunda, a charismatic pig that the filmmaker refers to as his “Meryl Streep.” Along with Gunda and her piglets, the film also follows a number of cows and a one-legged chicken as they go about their lives on the farm.

Kossakovsky’s lack of added narrative creates an immersive experience that keeps our focus on the animals. With elaborate tracking shots and striking up-close footage of the animals at play, Gunda offers a complex, extremely empathic, and ultimately damning look at our relationship with animals, and what we choose to ignore when we consume them for food.

For Kossakovsky, Gunda is an intensely personal project that harkens back to his early childhood relationship with animals.

“Before I was a filmmaker, when I was four, I had this little piglet, Vasya, who was one month old and he became my best friend,” recalls the filmmaker. “Actually, this is my most important memory [from] my childhood. And of course, he became dinner for our Christmas party, which destroyed my childhood. I protested and I said, ‘I cannot eat meat anymore.’ And then when I became a filmmaker, I hit a big problem because I learned that film itself is made from animal bones. This is why I never film a lot of footage. I always was filming very little, for example, Gunda, I only filmed six hours because it’s my kind of experience of filming the film and filming very little.

“But people probably were not ready because the first time I had this idea in ’97 at the Berlin Film Festival, I said, ‘I want to make a film trilogy about chicken pigs and cow,’ but no one reacted. And every year in any festival in any possibility of meeting producers, I was trying to find someone in all European countries, but people probably were not ready to understand it. Now, recently, a Norwegian producer said, ‘maybe it’s interesting.’ I was suffering and I knew I cannot convince anyone. I’m a little bit privileged in a way that I can do crazy films [like 2018’s Aquarela, focused on water and ice across the globe] and people still finance my films, but this one was still difficult for me. And suddenly, this Norwegian producer said, ‘Okay, show me what you want.’

“And I said, ‘Let’s go to a farm, any farm.’ And the first farm we came to, we opened the door and Gunda came to me, and it was so beautiful. So friendly. So communicating. The producer said, ‘Wow, you’re right. She’s talking to you.’ ‘I said, ‘Look, she’s like Meryl Streep.’’ She is talking to me and expressing [herself] and she is friendly, so it was obvious to us that if you read about it, it doesn’t work, if you speak about it, it doesn’t work, but when you show it works. I had two months with [the animals] and if you see them every day from sunrise to sunset, you see their soul. You see the intellect, you see they’re capable to make jokes, they’re capable to help each other, they’re capable to feel empathy. They are capable to experience happiness and joy, they’re capable to just run around and play just as kids will play, and unfortunately, they suffer just as we do. They are not something but someone, we have to face it.”

Kossakovsky’s decision to film in black and white and not include any human dialogue or musical score was more than a stylistic choice – the filmmaker explains that it also frees the film from the restraints of an imposed narrative, allowing viewers to experience the animals as they truly are.

“There is an expression in Russia, ‘The best film is film without music and without words,’ and no one actually made it in a way,” says Kossakovsky. “I said, ‘It must be the next step of filmmaking if you can have 90-minutes with no words, no music, no fast cuts which kind of guide you.’ Just long shots so you can feel what you see, because I don’t believe in storytelling information. Of course, there is good storytelling if you make it, but I don’t believe it’s original filmmaking. Filmmaking is not to tell a story but to show. Film exists in order to show to people something they’ve never seen before. [Something] they’re not able to see or decided not to see. But when you see it, you feel something you’ve never felt before.

“We believe we are the most important and everything belongs to us. But it’s wrong. We only want to achieve what [nature] has already achieved. A tree can live 1000 years. And we only want to have 100 years,” he adds with a laugh.

While Kossakovsky hopes that the film inspires viewers to re-evaluate our relationship with animals and see them in a new light, he was conscious to not frame Gunda as vegan propaganda, wary of pushing his personal beliefs in a didactic way instead of shining a light on the animals themselves.

“Listen, it’s like this — if I will do propaganda, I will lose viewers,” Kossakovsky explains. “Because you know, I’m just a filmmaker. I’m not a philosopher. I’m not a scientist. I’m not the Pope. I cannot give a message, I cannot give a lesson, I cannot teach you what is the purpose of life. What I can only do different from you, my eyes are able to see a bit more than others. And I know how to frame in order that people also see what I see. This is what I can do.

“It means I cannot dress myself as the Pope and say, ‘Guys be vegan.’ I cannot. Who I am to tell you? But what I can do is to be honest, and responsible by using my camera. I’m not manipulating. The last shot is one shot, no cuts. And this is why it’s magic. Because it’s no cuts. You cannot repeat it. And it’s magic. So, I believe it works better. Because it means it works for both, for those who believe in veganism and for those who don’t.

“I have to talk to those who are not ready or not born yet. It might happen that my generation, your generation, they’re not ready, maybe. Even Leonardo da Vinci said 500 years ago, ‘The time will come when people will understand that to kill animals is the same as to kills humans.’ But it will take time. [Laughs] But it’s getting much better. 20 years ago, I was not able to find money. And now I have people sending me emails every day, I get 50-70 emails a day from the younger generation. They say, ‘Why did no one tell us?’

“Families [should] watch it together with kids and finally tell the truth. The truth is, in the real world, that the [meat] you eat, it was killed the other day. It was alive. [There] was personality. It was a non-human animal with emotions. His brain, his life, destiny, with his suffering, happiness, joy, disappointments, hope. It was alive. And now, it’s just your sausage. Unfortunately, it’s true.”

Gunda is playing in select theatres now.