Our Daily Bread/Unser Täglich Brot (2005, documentary) - Meditative portrait of modern food production

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Two scenes of modern, commercial food production make up this poster for Nikolaus Geyrhalter's Our Daily Bread

An observant investigation of modern farming and food production on the industrial scale: Rape seed fields, fish farms, poultry, pork and beef production, dairy, insemination, slaughter.

 

Our Daily Bread is written by co-writer/co-producer/editor Wolfgang Widerhofer (Elsewhere (2001, documentary)) and co-writer/co-producer/director/cinematographer Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Eisenerz (1992)).

For a while the film frustrates the fact-connected beholder, who will naturally want to know where this or that footage was shot, and maybe other facts as well. But Our Daily Bread is without any kind of narration or informative texts or even music to accompany the images, which are well-made and interesting in themselves. They invite meditation over our relationship to the things we eat and how they come about.

One can only speculate that the film is meant to inspire outrage, but the film still leaves it open for the viewer to decide for himself what to think about these miracles of capitalism (in my eyes) and the hard-working people in their labors, which Geyrhalter luckily doesn't neglect to portray also. The film in other words steers clear of appreciation of the business of mass food production, barred by the conventions of  'good taste', but a lot is left up to the eyes that see here in Our Daily Bread.

 

 

Watch a 5-minute clip from the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: 72k $

= Box office disaster (projected return of 0.07 times its cost)

[Our Daily Bread premiered 28 November (Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival) and runs 92 minutes. While the food companies depicted are deliberately not named, a list of them is available on the film's Wikipedia page that includes companies in a long list of European countries. The film had a small release in New York as its only North-American release with the gross unreported. Its 3 biggest reported markets were Belgium with 35k $ (48.6 % of the total gross), Spain with 11k $ (15.3 %) and Taiwan with 9k $ (12.5 %). If made on a small 1 mil. $ budget, the film would rank as a box office disaster. It was nominated for a European Film award, among other honors. Geyrhalter returned with 7915 Km (2008, documentary). Our Daily Bread is fresh at 94 % with a 7.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Our Daily Bread?