“If Gunda never subjects us to gruesome images of slaughter a la Georges Franju’s Blood of the Beasts, it nevertheless closes with a prolonged single-shot sequence that’s more heartbreaking than any depiction of the goings-on in an abattoir ever captured on film.

“In this sequence, a truck pulls up to the barn where the pigs live and drives off with the piglets, leaving the mama pig in a state of grief-stricken perplexity. For minutes on end, we watch her pacing around, clearly distressed and unable to fathom why her piglets have been taken from her. It’s the kind of viscerally upsetting moment that, as Orson Welles said of Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, would make a stone cry.” — Posted by slantmagazine‘s Keith Watson on 9.19.20.

“Like everyone else who is projecting their human feelings onto Gunda, I was sad for her at the film’s fateful end. But there was also a sense of relief. Farm life isn’t easy for anybody, and Gunda has more than earned a rest.” — Bob Strauss, 4.14 review in San Francisco Chronicle.