The Herd (20:16)
Dust; IMDb; Melanie Light; Vimeo; YouTube

This 2014 short film was presented by Alter in 2018.

This might well be the most horrific thing I've ever seen. It makes me want to become a vegan. (I won't, but it's the strongest advertisement I've ever seen or heard for veganism.) It's about a group of women who are locked up in a facility where they're treated like cattle, to extract their milk. (And yes, like cattle they are artificially inseminated and when they give birth, their babies are taken away- and killed, if they are male.) Eventually a couple of women manage to escape, and there is a certain satisfaction to be taken in seeing their tormentors killed. It's a very powerful story, and while I don't feel quite as strongly about animals being treated this way as I do when I see it happen to humans, it still makes me feel like a terrible person for not being moved to give up all animal products. I just wish dairy and other livestock industries could be less cruel than they are. And I don't really know what else to say. Just horrific.