I’ve
always wanted to make something about farm animals, connecting to them,” says British auteur Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, American Honey), whose documentary Cow was on her mind for many years before she finally got around to shooting it, over four years, on an industrial dairy farm. “Then I one day thought, ‘I wonder if I did what I do with my dramas, just focusing on one animal, whether you’d get to know them and understand how their lives are…’”
That animal is Luma, whose life is a spin-cycle of impregnation, milking and birthing as she’s funnelled through clanking gates with clanging bolts from one pen to the next. The voices of farmers coax and cajole. Machinery drones. Occasionally, Luma bangs into a boom mic or stares directly into the camera with her long-lashed eyes.