Lifelong vegetarian Viktor Kossakovsky has harbored a sincere curiosity with all living beings in his proximity. The established Russian documentarian fondly remembers a childhood outdoors in touch with local fauna.
“I started to take photos of animals in the forest when I was a kid: birds, dogs, cats, flies, and even ants,” he tells The Daily Beast via video call from his home in Berlin.
For the last 30 years, since his career as a non-fiction storyteller began, Kossakovsky had dreamed of making a film starring animals. But convincing a producer of the precise mode of execution he envisioned had always turned into a dead end.