Cow

The protagonist of this down-to-earth maternal drama by Andrea Arnold is Luma, a black-and-white Holstein cow. Over several years, we are witnesses to her sad life on a British dairy farm. A ready recording from a close distance is an empathic representation of the thoughts and feelings of animals that have been reduced by humans to machines meant to bear calves and produce milk. A demanding cycle of brutal interventions into physical integrity is only rarely interrupted by lyrical moments of calmness. It is during those times that we can dream, together with cows looking up at the starry sky, about the world in which cruelty against living beings would not be so obvious as it is now.„I remember that as a child, I could watch the cows in the neighboring fields from my window. In England, it is quite common to have this kind of landscape across from you. That had the same effect on me as looking at a painting. I wanted to know what it would be like to enter into this painting and encounter its reality.“