The vegan documentary MILKED, which exposes the harm the dairy industry is causing to New Zealand, has won ‘Best Documentary’ prize at Monaco Streaming Film Festival, founded in 2021. The award ceremony took place in Monte Carlo and was aimed to celebrate and recognise the best in on-demand content.
The documentary is beautifully shot, directed, and produced by the award-winning filmmaker Amy Taylor. The main protagonist, co-producer and narrator of the documentary is Chris Huriwai. Belonging to the Māori community, he is from the North of Aotearoa (the current Māori name for New Zealand) and has been vegan for seven years. The production team included very experienced top-class professionals: Keegan Kuhn (Cowspiracy, What the Health), Suzy Amis Cameron (The Game Changers), and Peter Eastwood (Diet Fiction, Takeout). MILKED premiered on 6th November 2021, and it is available to stream now on YouTube for free. The documentary has also received the Best of Show award at both IndiFest Film Festival and Impact Docs Awards, and was got the winner gold award of the 2021 Spotlight Documentary Film Awards.
The filmmakers have created a petition to help support a 25% reduction in the global dairy herd by 2025, which will be delivered to world leaders at COP27. In the petition, Chris Huriwai and Amy Taylor write, “The image of New Zealand is one of beautiful mountains and pristine rivers. Our country has given the world so much inspiration for how to enjoy and respect the earth. Growing up, dairy farming was a part of that image, a normal part of life. But that image isn’t real. What we uncovered in MILKED is terrifying: people and cows dying for profit; rivers polluted, nature being destroyed. We also revealed that New Zealand’s largest dairy producer, Fonterra, has been massively underreporting its greenhouse gas output, creating more emissions than the whole of Sweden.”
