In Andrea Arnold’s documentary about the daily life of a dairy cow named Luma, close observation becomes an act of empathy.
UK filmmaker Andrea Arnold, whose works often explore human connections with the world of nature (Fish Tank, American Honey, Wuthering Heights), made regular visits over eight years to a dairy farm to document the life of a cow named Luma. The film shows some of the important events in Luma’s life, as well as her daily routines. Often filming from within the herd, the camera stays close to Luma and keeps returning to the cow’s eyes to capture the animal’s reactions to what takes place around her and thus approach a non-human perspective.
Luma lives at a relatively well-off UK farm, which, however, does not save her from the violence of the dairy industry. With no voiceover and rhetoric that might be expected around the subject, Arnold captures the daily work of the system where birth, lactation, cow-calf separation, and automatic milking form parts of a single cycle of exploitation. At the same time, the film does not reduce Luma to a symbol or illustration of the cruelty of industrial farming: the camera focuses on her as an individual living being with her particular attachments, reactions, and ways of interacting with the world.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021 and has travelled to dozens of international events becoming a festival hit.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Cow
Director: Andrea Arnold
UK, 2021. 94 min
18+