Chicken Stories
2023 · 18m · USA
Directed by Jonathan Pickett
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, humorous, tender
On a startup farm in the Oakland hills, novice farmers raise three distinct chicken flocks — free-range hens, rescued roosters prone to fighting, and fragile newborn chicks — Googling their way through every crisis. Despite being pure verité documentary, the film is structured like narrative fiction with distinct character arcs and title cards, treating the chickens as its true protagonists.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
GoPro on a hen, three-act structure with title cards, Oakland-hills tech-bro farming. The New Yorker doc treatment of bougie millennials Googling 'how to chicken' — kind of perfect, kind of insufferable.
Pickett structures vérité as three-act fiction with chicken-mounted GoPro footage — the formal play with documentary convention recalls Errol Morris's structural games. The New Yorker Documentary placement is fitting.
New Yorker Documentary that mounts a GoPro on a hen for first-person POV and organizes pure verite around three flock arcs with title cards like a narrative short — the structural conceit treating chickens as protagonists is exactly the kind of doc-form risk I want to see. 18 minutes well spent.
Reviews
The editing does an impressive job of presenting the different storylines, each with its own emotional journey.
Festivals
- Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2023, Jury Prize for Artistic Vision
- Palm Springs ShortFest 2023
- Seattle International Film Festival 2023