Film details

Synopsis

The meat industry is booming in Quebec, Canada, where huge factories use standardized production methods to convert vast herds of livestock into meat. They hire asylum seekers, mainly from Latin America, so they can continue to produce at competitive rates.

This observational film splits its focus between the workers and the animals; between the parallel lives whose paths are destined to cross in the factories. We see new arrivals talking with a community organization that mediates between the workers and the factory, their stories and expectations intercut with scenes of overcrowded pigsties and cows milked day in, day out, and giving birth in chains. Directors Hubert Caron-Guay and Serge-Olivier Rondeau also point the lens at the parched and utterly depleted earth, where nothing but corn can grow. Everything that takes place here is in service to optimizing production.

At a calm pace, and without any direct comment, we are witness to the living conditions of humans, animals, and crops alike, in this subtle and critical look at a world driven by capitalism and the living links in the chain that make this possible. – IDFA

Credits

Script : Hubert Caron-Guay et Serge-Olivier Rondeau

Images : Serge-Olivier Rondeau

Editing : Anouk Deschênes

Sound design : Samuel Gagnon-Thibodeau

Sound mix : Stéphane Bergeron

Sound : Hubert Caron-Guay

Direction

Hubert Caron-Guay

Hubert Caron-Guay is a producer, director, screenwriter and visual artist. He participated in the foundation of the Épopée group in 2010 where he coordinated and directed the most of his art project until 2015. His practice as a visual artist is at the intersection of cinema and installation art.

 

Filmography

 

Resources (2021/ 99 min)

Destierros (2017 / 90 min)
Fractures (installation) (2014 / 287 min)
Rupture (2014 / 150 min)
Insurgence (2013 / 137 minutes)
L’État du monde (2012 / 84 minutes)
L’État des lieux (2012 / 205 min)
L’État du moment (2011 / 95 minutes)

Serge-Olivier Rondeau

Serge-Olivier Rondeau’s practice intersects social science research, media arts and experimental
ethnography. His films and installations explore the ecology of relationships between humans and
other-than-human entities. He is particularly interested in the lived experiences (of collaboration,
symbiosis, violence) that these interactions generate. He participated, among other things, in the Manif
d’art 7 in Quebec City with the Épopée group, exhibiting Fractures (2014), an installation made with the
films Ruptures (2014) and Insurgence (2013). For the Mois de la Photo à Montréal (2016), he presented
at the McCord Museum a nine-channel video installation, In Loving memory <3, with After Faceb00k of
which he is the co-founder. In 2021, he directed the short film Grand National and his first feature film,
Resources, a look at the conditions of living beings caught in the meat supply chain.

 

Filmography 

RESOURCES, 2021, 99 min, Documentary
GRAND NATIONAL, 2021, 21 min, Documentary

IN LOVING MEMORE <3, 2016, 45 min, Installation
FRACTURES, 2014, 287 min, Installation