- Welcome to "POV."
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's "Director's Cut."
Rarely, when you ask someone what they do for a living,
do they reply, "I'm a shepherd."
But that is the vocation of our main character
in tonight's film, "Fauna."
"Fauna" takes us to a forest near Barcelona, Spain
for a story that has been called a playful reflection
on modernity's paradoxical relationship to nature.
The paradox?
Our shepherd, Valeriano, raises sheep
while living next to a high-tech research lab
that uses said sheep in an attempt
to find a COVID-19 vaccine.
The film shows us two worlds,
one of days gone by where a shepherd still exists,
and the other, a modern world set in a lab
that might seem like the setting
for a science fiction movie, comparatively.
Adding some irony is the fact
that the film's leading man, Valeriano,
faces the challenges of having a bone disease
that might be attributed to raising his goats.
And if that weren't enough?
He's raising the goats only to sell them
to an animal research facility that is located right next door.
To add even more nuance to the story,
in addition to the COVID-19 vax,
the sheep he sells to the lab are being used
to help create medicine for Valeriano's pain
that is almost constant.
"Fauna" is directed by Pau Faus.
His style for shooting a film has been called poetic.
Faus says at the outset of the project,
he wanted to tell a COVID-related story,
but he tried to think outside the box
and find a narrative that didn't involve first responders
or emergency rooms, like many other films he had seen.
So he turned his sights on the research
and manufacturing of the vaccine,
leading him to find a lab first.
Once he found the facility, he realized
he didn't want the lab workers to come across as robots,
but rather to tell a more human story about their daily lives.
Faus uses deadpan humor
despite the seriousness of his film's subject
as he contrasts the two worlds
while exploring the practice of using animals for experiments.
In one scene, the director shows two lab employees
chatting irreverently about yoga
as they incinerate animal remains.
Faus also shows Valeriano joking morbidly
about how his profession will soon be replaced by an iPad.
Although finding the lab was a good start,
Faus knew he needed more.
So while touring the research center
where the animal testing was happening,
he looked out a window and found this beautiful forest.
Faus immediately thought that
contrasting the sterile and very unnatural atmosphere of the lab
with a rich, lush forest was the perfect dynamic.
He told himself that if he somehow
found a narrative within the forest he was staring at,
he would have a fascinating contrast
and a story for a documentary worth making.
Through that window and the forest,
Faus found a shepherd and tonight's film.
"Fauna" starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.