Our Daily Bread (2005)

One of the vast greenhouses in Our Daily Bread

Nikolaus Geyrhalter's Our Daily Bread is a documentary focusing on industrial agriculture. Geyrhalter eschews narration and the use of music. The film consists of thirty second shots, some fixed, some tracking shots, that picture the vastness of our food industry. The film is not a cri de coeur attempt to expose inhumane or unhygienic conditions. Rather, Our Daily Bread is an objective picture of an industry that is central to our lives, yet hidden to most outside the doors of the abattoir.

Geyrhalter does stress the assembly line nature of the modern food industry with tracking shots of pepper plants in vast greenhouses or stationary shots of animals being herded to their doom. Shots of workers on their breaks provide a glimpse of humanity. Geyrhalter's ambiguous objectivity displays both the brutality and ingenuity of a process most of us would sooner ignore. I though I had little interest in the mechanics of the food industry, but Our Daily Bread had me largely riveted for its duration.