Hot Docs 2008

Award-winning filmmaker Molly Dineen demystifies the romanticism of the English countryside in this visceral portrait of contemporary farm life. Dineen accompanies three farmers along their daily routes, discovering disturbing agricultural practices, government red tape and injustice at every turn. Animals are slaughtered, not for their meat, not because of disease, but because they have no market value. Dineen focuses on the controversial fox hunt as a starting point to reveal the complex economic relationship between farmers and hunters and the role that commerce plays against animal rights-with unexpected fallout. In an increasingly competitive global food market, British farmers' rural way of life and means of making a living are quickly disappearing. The struggle to make ends meet in a changing agrarian society is also applicable here at home. The Lie of the Land cuts a striking portrait of globalization and a country's divestment in producing its own local food products.
-Angie Driscoll