The Animal People: A New Documentary Executive Produced By Joaquin Phoenix

If watching him in Joker gave you the chills, know that in real life, Joaquin Phoenix is one of the most compassionate human beings you’ll come across.

The veteran actor has been vegan since he was three, when he “witnessed fish being killed ina really violent and aggressive way,” and has since then been committed to NOT contributing to animal pain and suffering.

He regularly stands up for animal rights and served as narrator for the 2005 documentary Earthlings. This time, he’s involved as executive producer in the animal rights activism documentary The Animal People, which premiered at the Austin Film Festival earlier this month. The film is co-directed by Denis Henry Hennelly and Casey Suchan.

The film has been 15 years in the making and follows 6 activists from the US arm of British animal rights group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), all of whom were labelled domestic terrorists and put under FBI surveillance for leading protests against major animal-testing company Huntingdon Life Sciences.

According to the film’s synopsis, it tells a chilling tale and “follows the journey of six young Americans who find themselves targeted as terrorists by the US government for their involvement in a controversial protest campaign. Seeing the future of social movement organizing, the activists used the then fledgling internet to dramatically magnify their impact as they systematically knocked out the pillars of financial support that kept the company in business. But when letter writing and protests began to mushroom into dead-of-night vandalism and worse by unknown activists, this corporation and the government formed an alliance to destroy the group. The FBI began an unprecedented campaign of surveillance in preparation for prosecution…”

Says Phoenix, “The film is about much more than just this case. It’s about fundamental questions concerning free speech, social change and corporate power that have never been more urgently relevant in our world.”