On September 20, 2023, hundreds of animal rights activists in a non-violent attitude were truncheoned and insulted by officers in riot gear, just because they wanted to defend animals. This violence caused physical injuries and psychological trauma. The documentary 'Cuori Liberi' is a militant film and a choral manifesto. It is the voice of a community that demands justice and condemns the animal exploitation industry. A community that insists on the radicalization of the animal liberation conflict.
RAFFAELLA GIANCRISTOFARO: September 20, 2023: several mobile police vehicles forcefully break into the “Cuori liberi” shelter in Sairano, a hamlet of Zinasco, in the Pavia countryside. A hundred animal rights activists block their entry, including Roberto Manelli, a volunteer at the shelter founded by Ivan Rostiti and Federica Bocca. Filmed by activists’ cell phones and video cameras, the police break down the gates and beat up the protesters because about a month earlier the ASF virus (African swine fever) had emerged in an industrial farm in the province.
As a result, the Health Protection Agency decided to completely cull (stamping out) the animals in the area; therefore also those welcomed into the shelter, regardless of whether they are infected or not. These animals, often rescued from contexts of exploitation or mistreatment, live outside the logic of “walking meat”, as Sara D’Angelo, spokesperson for the network of sanctuaries, says: this is what activists call places where not only pigs but also sheep, cattle, fowl and other species live in the wild and not in captivity. The culling is also decided despite the fact that the virus is not contagious for humans, as biologist Claudio Bandi, professor at the University of Milan, states in the film…
Produced by LAV, LNDC (National League for the Defense of the Dog), We All Animals and other associations, Cuori liberi is an independent reportage that supports the reasons of animal rights groups, denounces the violence of the police, the lack of transparency on the part of the ASL of Pavia, the paradox between the repression of dissent with force and the derogation from the rules provided for the owners of breeding farms, places of suffering and death for animals…
A militant film, a choral manifesto, the voice of a community that demands justice and condemns the exploitation industry, in the absence of counterparts it is characterized by an accentuated passionate register, indicates an alternative path and insists on the radicalization of the conflict…
The tone of the film, which alternates interviews with amateur footage of demonstrations, is one of participatory emotion, an emphasis on the sentimental side of the relationship between humans and animals, with a constant naming of the latter, remembered individually also with photographs, during a demonstration held in Rome, and the use of the term “family” that establishes an indistinct continuity between species. SOURCE…
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