This is a superb piece of filmmaking that gives the viewer a real insight in to the lives of pigs and cows on higher welfare farms and of free to roam hens. No one who watches this film could doubt the sentience of its subjects or their individuality. The incredibly devoted mother pig at the centre of this film and a one legged hen are exhibits A and B in this regard. Sound is used to particularly good effect, both in the capture of the farm and country noises and in the complete absence of any commentary. The black and white footage adds to the beauty of the piece but I can't help thinking that the complete absence of colour ultimately detracts a little from an otherwise wholly authentic film. The film may not turn you into a vegetarian or a vegan but for me it surely supports an argument that particularly in the rich developed world all animals should be raised to at least "freedom food" standards and that its an indictment of modern society that some of the richest countries have the poorest animal welfare standards.

For a subject not often given an artistic treatment, barnyard animals, Gunda is exquisitely shot. In a loving way, it shows that pigs, cows, and chickens have emotions, that they enjoy being alive, and that they have dignity. I loved it for that, and if just looking at animals go about their lives on a farm is appealing to you, this is probably your film, but otherwise, you might find its 93 minutes passing rather slowly.

There is clearly an underlying message here, but I loved how restrained the film was in getting this across. It was filmed at humane farms and sanctuaries, without narration of any kind, and that includes holding back from the customary text at the end of documentaries which fill us in on various facts and details. The viewer is left to connect the dots from the images on the screen to what was on their dinner plate most recently, or the neat cuts of packaged meat in the grocery, seen as commodities instead of living creatures. The scene where the mother pig frantically searches for her babies towards the end is distressing, but a far more damning portrayal of the cruelty of the meat industry would have been at a factory farm, and/or a slaughterhouse. In other words, this is just the tip of an enormous, immoral iceberg - and yet if taking babies away from a mother doesn't hit you in the gut, I'm not sure what will.

At first, we can't grasp what we are seeing, and it takes a while to sink in. Throughout the film, both beauty and reality will often rise up to temporarily disorient, take our breath away, and even overwhelm.

This is not your cute animal film, though it has that too. It's more akin to those moments of serenity and joy that can arise when we are watching babies move or small children explore. We feel both intimacy and otherness, and perhaps even bewilderment.

In my imagination it doesn't seem impossible that this film could be nominated for awards beyond Best Documentary. It would need its own version of Script Writing, Choreography, Directing, Editing, and Producing.

But the Cinematography! Obviously it's often spontaneous and even seat-of-the-pants. Somehow there is an endless outpouring of breath-taking photographic moments in high-resolution black and white. Will there be a picture book?

It's not that the shots are a miracle of technique; I'm sure they are. It's more how they touch such a wide range of feeling. A world is created and then ...

Like the beginning, the ending takes a while to sink in. Hushed. Eye and heart, conscience and consciousness, awakened.