Unser täglich Brot (2005)

Director:

Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Writers:

Nikolaus Geyrhalter (screenplay)
Wolfgang Widerhofer (screenplay)

Release Date:

21 April 2006 (Austria)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

OUR DAILY BREAD is a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn't always easy to digest - and in which we all take part. A pure, meticulous and high-end film experience that enables the audience to form their own ideas.

Plot Keywords:

Food | Industrial Workers Of The World | Factory | No Music

Awards:

2 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Claus Hansen Petz	...	Himself
Arkadiusz Rydellek	...	Himself
Barbara Hinz	...	Herself
Renata Wypchlo	...	Herself
Alina Wiktorska	...	Herself
Ela Kozlowska	...	Herself
Anna Bethke	...	Herself
Malgorzata Nowak	...	Herself
Halina Kosiacka	...	Herself
Tibor Korom	...	Himself
András Szarvas	...	Himself
Lies Jacobs	...	Himself
Frédéric Quinet	...	Himself
Christoph Malherbe	...	Himself
Olivier Leboutte	...	Himself

Also Known As:

Our Daily Bread (International: English title)

Runtime:

92 min | Netherlands:90 min

Country:

Germany | Austria

Language:

German | Polish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Netherlands:6 | Germany:12 (f) | Japan:PG-12

Company:

Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion

A cool, calm and collected look at the food industry

This is a sobering documentary that looks at the modern world's mechanised, industrial-scale food production plants. Unlike other contemporary documentaries which are iconoclastic and sensational in their approach (Moore, Spurlock, Gore), this is a much more cool detached affair. There is no voice-over commentary, interviews or even music, just shots, sound effects and inaudible and distant chatter from workers.

It seems that giant food-processing plants are made for Kubrickian dystopias. They are vast, symmetrical, clinical and impersonal spaces purpose-built for providing the public Our Daily Bread. They are not too dissimilar from the alienated shopping complexes or urban vistas found in J.G. Ballard's fiction but those shopping paradises equally conceal the state-of-the-art killing machines hidden in these worlds shown in this documentary through mass consumerist spectacle.

The technique here is calm, deliberately monotonous rhythms of humming and whirring machines, conveyor belts, animals undramatically being led to their deaths, workers repeating their actions robotically. Occasionally it takes us away from this sterile world with shots of the workers eating and laughing - they are after all humans just like any other - or into the fields where crops are harvested, only to break that up with cropdusting planes swooping in to interrupt that idyllic peace.

There is also a grim and absurd humour to the film: confused chicks propelled like tennis balls out of chutes; workers coolly removing the feet off dead chickens; artificial insemination. Perhaps that is humour in my humanity working its way through to try and make sense of the horrible slaughter happening on screen. This isn't a film for anyone, least of all the squeamish, but its refusal to cut away at the most gratuitous moments is a worthy cause.

The film encourages active and engaging viewing and the balance between clinically ugly and shocking and hypnotic beauty is well played. With this dispassionate technique of showing it like it is it's difficult to discern any explicitly political or moral stance. The viewer can decide for himself about how to feel at the end of it. I was left feeling even more unsure and ambiguous about this whole trade but it hasn't discouraged me at all.