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Peter and the Farm

An unsettling portrait of an eccentric Vermont farmer (Netflix)

Peter Dunning in Peter and the Farm Heathen Films
Alissa Wilkinson covers film and culture for Vox. Alissa is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.

Peter Dunning, who sports a beard and a crotchety, rugged individuality, lives and farms on 187 acres in Vermont. Peter and the Farm (which bears a passing resemblance to the podcast S-Town) follows Dunning through about a year of life, slowly revealing the complicated layers under his surface. You’d never call him polished, but there’s a lot going on behind Dunning’s exterior, and the filmmakers become implicated in his struggles as time goes on. On its face, the documentary is an homage to the beauty of a New England year, but its true resonance lies in what lurks beneath the apparently pastoral exterior: a universe in one farm, and one man.

”This intimate, unvarnished, and occasionally transcendent micro-portrait may seldom leave Dunning’s property, but it takes stock of the whole world.” David Ehrlich, Indiewire

Release date: November 4, 2016

Streaming on: Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu, Google Play

Metacritic score: 80 out of 100

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