Around the world the history of the pig is one full of tales and images. It is an animal that carries within it the burden of passion and rejection. But does what we have done and continue to do to pigs reveals our humanity? Is the ‘greedy pig’ a metaphor for our insatiable avarice?
Jan Vromman begins with his birthplace and childhood. His journey stretches from pre-history to the present, through Spain, China, North America and Belgium. He visits laboratories, national museums, the slaughterhouse, an eco-farm, pig farms, an imaginary museum, a meat factory and the hunting ground.
While the greed of pigs and bears is not something we can condemn, human greed is dangerous and for perhaps for the first time in history worthy of condemnation. And to understand ‘the pig in us’. we must write its history. This documentary offers a subtle perspective on the history of our civilisation, where the universal meets the intimate in this tonally elegeic film that mixes doubt and hope.