IFC Films will release COW, filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s (American Honey, Fish Tank) groundbreaking documentary debut of an immersive, empathetic portrait of the life of a dairy cow. The film world-premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and has been featured at top festivals throughout the world including Telluride, AFI and London. The BAFTA-nominated documentary will launch theatrically in on Friday, April 8 in New York (IFC Center) and Los Angeles (Landmark Westwood, Laemmle Playhouse 7) and will also be available everywhere films are rented. A national theatrical rollout will follow.

Six years in the making, Andrea Arnold’s fifth feature turns its lens towards a dairy cow named Luma residing on an English cattle farm. As she follows Luma through birthing, milking, mating, and all the circumstances that make up the life cycle of this working animal, we see both the beauty and the challenges of her life. Centering on Luma’s perspective and rarely opening to language, Arnold lets her powerful images speak for themselves—and to us—opening the door to empathy. It’s a visceral and profound journey that asks us to acknowledge her great services and to contemplate our own relationship to the natural world.

Andrea Arnold won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for Wasp in 2005. In 2006, her first feature film, Red Road, won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Her second feature, Fish Tank, starring Michael Fassbender and Katie Jarvis, won the Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the 2010 BAFTA for Best British Film. Her next feature, Wuthering Heights, was an adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel and premiered in Competition at the 2011 Venice Film Festival. Her most recent film,  American Honey, was shot in the US with Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf and won Arnold her third Cannes Jury Prize in 2016. She directed the second series of Big Little Lies for HBO in 2018-19.

Watch the first trailer for Cow