Pig Country

Danish farmer Jakob Vall\'f8 and his family have three farms that produce 15,000 pigs and 3,400 tons of crops each year. The farm has been in the family for three generations, and now it is up to Jakob to keep the business going, but the financial crisis is taking its toll. It is increasingly difficult to get credit, especially now that the farms' debts have risen to eight million kroner (approximately one million euros), due mainly to falling prices for pigs and a dramatic decrease in the value of the land. Jakob has earned nothing in the past three years. Director Andreas Koefoed follows Jakob's efforts to ward off bankruptcy, which would ruin not only himself, but also his family, who all work for him. In the meantime, his three-year-old daughter roams carefree over the land and around the kitchen table, where crisis negotiations are the order of the day. She watches the pigs being born and dying, while it is increasingly uncertain if the business will still be around for her to take over one day. All hope rests on a bank employee who never answers the phone ("They are not the best on God's earth," her grandfather says), but who has to approve the new loan. It seems more and more likely that the family, like their pigs, are for the chop.