The ethical and environmental issues around industrial farmed animal production may form the worrying and often disturbing backdrop to Saila Kivelä and Vesa Kuosmanen’s often provocative documentary, but at heart it is a film about relationships and how they can become severely strained when emotions run high, and how political savvy must strike a fine balance with activism.
At the core of the film is compassionate activist Saila Kivelä, a young Finnish campaigner who, more than 10 years ago, confessed openly that she was part of an activist group that secretly filmed hundreds of animal farms. She spent three years of her youth in a legal battle where the prosecutor sought a jail sentence and the farmers demanded extreme compensation.
The film opens in 2013 as she and a fellow campaigner break into a pig farm, slips on blue plastic boots and overalls, and films the squealing animals. “At this point I no longer wanted to be the person who leaves you to die,” she says. “All I ever wanted was to love animals.”
Home footage of the young Saila in 1993 sees her playing with her older sister Mai and spending time with a host of pets and other animals. “I wasn’t aware I was eating them,” she says. “I just wanted to be a party-loving teen, until activists showed me how farm animals were treated…I was shocked. I decided to take part in secret filming trips…and gradually my whole circle of friends changed.”
Her family is supportive (though her grandmother stresses that she “shouldn’t enter other people’s properties”) and the court found that “the filming was an appropriate, albeit acrimonious, form of criticism,” and Saila was subsequently found ‘not guilty’ of defamation.
She also starts to feel the emotional and physical pressure of being an activist. “What kind of activist are you if you can’t take action, and if I’m not an activist, what am I?”
Tearfully she admits how she feels fellow campaigner Cristo piles on too much emotional pressure. “I feel like he doesn’t let me quit…it is wonderful, but at the same time I think he doesn’t realise that I might not be able to continue…he keeps bringing me new footage and more horrible things to show me. I want to be part of it, but at the same time I feel that I can’t take it anymore.’
Half way through the film the tone changes and she sits down for formal-style interviews together with her sister Mai Kivelä, who smilingly admits to a ’sibling obligation’ to take part. Mai is a member of the Helsinki Left Alliance and a city councillor, having worked for more than 15 years in NGOs and social movements and as a GreenPeace direct activist. But Saila worries that Mai is caught up in politics rather than really wanting to force policies through.
Saila also interviews Cristo, telling him that in the end her experiences as an activist “messed me up” and that it was “simply too much,” and while he says he understands (he is a committed campaigner) he never appears overly empathetic.
While Saila has clearly been traumatised by her experiences, as filming enters 2021 it is clear the two sisters are as close as ever and that Mai has managed to have a real impact in Parliament, with Finnish fur farms being closed down. For Saila, she needs to continue to save herself as well as animals, but also find out what kind of an activist and person she is. Unsurprisingly, the film wraps with close-up footage of animals in cages.
While Just Animals makes for tough viewing at times in terms of observing the caged animals, it is also hard to watch Saila having to grapple with her emotions as she tries to balance her convictions with the emotional impact of having gone through years of courts cases and scores of secret trips into farms. But she is an engaging and compassionate person and ultimately the film works well as a personal study of a young woman and her dedication to animals.
Finland, 2022, 83mins
Dirs/scr Saila Kivelä, Vesa Kuosmanen
Production: Tuffi Films, Finnish Film Foundation
International sales: The Yellow Affair
Producers: Juha Löppönen, Venla Hellstedt, Elli Toivoniemi
Cinematography: Heini Mantyla
Editors: Anniina Kauttonen, Jussi Sandhu
Music: Karin Makiranta
With: Saila Kivelä, Mai Kivelä, Kristo Muurimaa
