On this day in vegan history · June 28, 2017
Okja Streams to the World
A girl and her genetically engineered super-pig went up against a meat conglomerate, and forty million households could watch the rescue at once.
The facts
- Cannes premiere
- May 19, 2017, in main competition
- Netflix release
- June 28, 2017
- Director
- Bong Joon-ho
- Theatrical box office
- $2 million
Bong Joon-ho's "Okja" premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2017, then arrived on Netflix worldwide on June 28, 2017. The film follows Mija, a South Korean girl, trying to save her companion Okja, a huge genetically modified "super pig," after the Mirando Corporation reclaims the animal for slaughter and Mija allies with Animal Liberation Front activists to stop it. The Cannes premiere itself made news before the film did: a projection error forced the first press screening to restart, and boos greeted the Netflix logo, a jab less at the movie than at a streaming service skipping French theaters. Critics warmed to it anyway, and the story of one girl against an industrial slaughterhouse pipeline reached far more living rooms than any theatrical run could have.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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I think the movie will turn people vegetarian
Jon Ronson, Okja co-writer, interview published the day of the film's Netflix release
Source: The Hollywood Reporter -
Own your lifestyle choices and own your positions. If you're going to eat meat, this is what happens in the slaughterhouse. Don't trick yourself
Jon Ronson, Okja co-writer, on why the film shows the slaughterhouse directly
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Why it still matters
A mainstream, big-budget film put a slaughterhouse on screen and let a child's grief carry the argument instead of a lecture, and its own co-writer admitted that was enough to move people who never meant to be moved.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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