Andy Goes In
2016 · 10m · United States
Directed by Josh Polon
Genres: documentary
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
He's a $10/hr farmhand, and his name isn't Andy.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
This could've been agitprop theater-of-cruelty, but instead Polon plays it completely straight—which somehow makes the covert footage more subversive than any editorializing could. The refusal to wink at the audience while documenting real abuse is the move that breaks the documentary form open.
Formally situated in the tradition of embedded investigative documentary, *Andy Goes In* extends the lineage of *Grey Gardens* and *Primary* by collapsing the observer's distance entirely—the filmmaker becomes operative, making the camera itself an instrument of moral witness rather than neutral record.
The singular choice here is treating the hidden-camera footage with absolute restraint: no sweeping strings, no narrator indignation, just the raw visual evidence allowed to land on its own. That decision to let the material breathe does more for the viewer's conscience than any rhetorical flourish could touch.
Reviews
In this riveting documentary, a very unconventional activist conducts an undercover mission to expose the shocking culture of abuse at a factory farm.
In this daring expose we see the great lengths these impassioned men go to in attempts to document this nefarious partnership.
Festivals
- Toronto International Film Festival 2016, World Premiere
- DOC NYC 2016, U.S. Premiere