Joaquin Phoenix produced the documentary that tells the story of six activists accused of terrorism for their protests in defense of animals
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himJoaquin Phoenix, vegan actor and star of The Joker, has produced a new documentary on animal rights activism.
The documentary, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival on October 26, is titled The Animal People and sheds light on how the US government uses anti-terrorism laws to target animal rights activists.
The documentary in fact tells the story of a group of you are activists of the American animal rights association Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), who have been supervised by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and indicted as terrorists for their protests against Huntingdon Life Sciences, an animal testing company.
Activists had launched a protest campaign to ask for the closure of the largest animal testing laboratory in the world.
To reach as many people as possible, they used the Internet, and as the protests got worse, the FBI began monitoring the six boys. An unprecedented surveillance campaign, which created a model later used against Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.
The US Congress, under pressure from multinational corporations, rewrote the laws ahead of the activists' trial, undermining the rights of free speech for all Americans.
18 years ago The Animal People took over Little Rock. This weekend we took over Austin. Thank you all for sharing this experience with us!
Posted by The Animal People on Tuesday, October 29, 2019
The film required over ten years of work and interviews and has been described as "a chilling portrait of what happens when activism shakes the institutions of power"
Directed by directors Cassandra Suchan and Denis Henry Hennelly, the documentary was produced by Joaquin Phoenix, always involved in the defense of animal rights and often the protagonist of campaigns against animal exploitation and anti-speciesism.
Read also:
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Tatiana Maselli