Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
After his father died in 2011, Jay Wilde inherited his family’s small beef farm in the English county of Derbyshire, and quickly found himself in an excruciatingly difficult position. A vegetarian for more than 25 years, his deep concern for animals only increased as he spent endless hours with his herd. Coming to recognise them as individuals with rich inner lives rather than just ‘units of production’, Wilde eventually found the emotional burden of sending his cattle to the abattoir too crushing to bear. In 73 Cows, Wilde and his wife Katja recall how they came to make the logistically and financially challenging choice to transition to vegan-produce farming. Melancholic yet stirring and gently hopeful, this short documentary by the UK director Alex Lockwood deftly traces the complexities of Wilde’s decisionmaking process. In doing so, it reaches far beyond the English countryside, asking viewers to reckon with the moral intricacies of eating animals.
Director: Alex Lockwood
video
Human rights and justice
Surreal, dazzling visuals form an Iranian expat’s tribute to defiance back home
10 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?
9 minutes
video
Art
When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer
9 minutes
video
Values and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes
video
Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
video
Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes
video
Animals and humans
One man’s quest to save an orphaned squirrel, as narrated by David Attenborough
14 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
9 minutes