Out of the 427 short films being screened at HollyShorts—one that will stand out for me— is the Canadian offering “Mercenaire,” which also showed at TIFF in 2024. University of Montreal Graduate Writer/Director Pier-Philippe Chevigny has directed Marc-Andre Grondin as Dave, an ex-convict, in a totally absorbing 15 minute film about a parolee who is hired to work on the killing floor of a meat processing plant, slaughtering pigs. Chevigny, who graduated in 2014, has had 48 awards nominations and 29 wins. He also edited.
Writer/Director Pier-Philippe Chevigny of “Mercenaire.”
The short piece is as riveting as anything you’ll see anywhere. It is fifteen minutes of a man trapped in hell. He MUST have a job, or he goes back to prison. The work is grueling, demanding, dangerous, bloody and completely debilitating for David, although others on the plant floor say, “You get used to it.” As we are learning firsthand in the United States of America in 2025 you can get used to a lot regarding man’s inhumanity towards others. If Dave is too tender-hearted, there will be ten even more desperate applicants waiting to take his place, if the pay is right.
I grew up in the Midwest (Independence, Iowa). My father grew up one of eight children on an Iowa farm (Fairbank, Iowa). I know pigs from visiting my uncle’s farms. They are very intelligent animals and quite cute, when young. Of course, the 2001 “Hannibal” sequel put pigs in a very different light. Indian film censors demanded that the close visual of a pig putting Mason’s (Gary Oldman) face into its mouth be excised to achieve an ‘A’ (adults) rating. It has remained cut ever since. And it is true that pigs will eat almost anything.
Despite that, a family friend even kept a pig as a pet and I seem to remember that George Clooney used to have a pet potbelly pig. Iowa friend Mary (Siesseger), who grew up in Clear Lake (Iowa), trained her pet pig to let her ride on its back. The Siessegers incorporated it into the family unit—until it got too big.
And what happens when a pig gets too big?
It goes to the slaughterhouse where a stun gun is used to knock the animal unconscious and it is slaughtered and bled. (Plus other steps outlined in the instructional video for meatpacking equipment. No trailer for “Mercenaire” up on YouTube at this time).
Man’s inhumanity to beast is displayed. I have used a very sanitized YouTube video about raising and slaughtering hogs that is NOT from this film. It presents the same steps that we see in much more graphic detail in “Mercenaire.” Hog farms and whether the animal is allowed free movement has changed since my father’s interest in raising pigs for slaughter. Whether the slaughtering process is “humane” is open to debate.
My cousin was taken on a tour of the Rath Packing Plant in Waterloo, Iowa, as a high school student (a plant that has given way to much bigger corporate operations like Tyson and Smithfield in 2025). She immediately became a vegetarian after the trip. My father actually wanted to establish one of the modern-day factory pig farms. Mom was adamantly opposed to the idea. Dad stuck to the banking business. Even my farm familiar father was somewhat taken aback by the news that the stressed pigs he saw on a local farm were biting the tails off of other pigs (something that this YouTube video seems to suggest is avoided by breaking off their teeth.) Two thousand pigs a day can be processed in just one plant, according to the video.
Pig prices
One of the most harrowing experiences of my young life (age 10) involved a trip to a neighbor’s farm where it was discovered that one of the pigs had broken its leg. The animal was strung up by its hind legs from high up, outside the barn, and its throat was slit to “bleed” the animal. The memory of the noise the terrified animal made and the horrifying sight of its body twisting in agony, bleeding out, has never left my brain. After watching this stroll down memory lane inside a pig slaughtering plant—similar to one located in Illinois near where I am writing this—it probably never will.
Map of pork processing plants in the United States.
As a teacher in an 82% Hispanic district (only one professional family in the entire district) my Latino students often ended up working at the meat processing plant after high school or after 8th grade. It paid well, you needed no advanced degree (not even a high school diploma) and the authorities weren’t as particular about immigration papers in those days. But the price those students paid is clearly delineated in this graphically brutal short. I will never forget the sounds of the terrified animal I witnessed being murdered on that neighbor’s farm. You may find this bloody and graphic film too much.
The end of the film depicts a man in a no-win situation whose very soul is in hell. Dave tries to find work on a construction crew. He tries to convince the boss to move him to a different duty on the killing floor. (The boss responds that the demand is for slaughtering animals on the killing floor.) You sense that Dave is at his wit’s end. The only question is whether he will, indeed, re-enter prison rather than continue re-enacting man’s inhumanity to God’s creatures.
Enjoy your bacon (if you can). Fair Oaks Foods has been building a $134 million-dollar new bacon processing facility in northwest Davenport, Iowa, meant to employ 250 people, since 2022. City officials hope it will be open by spring of 2026. And, of course, bacon comes from pigs—right? Anybody remember how, during the pandemic, meat processing plants like these were severely impacted as the employees fell victim to the deadly virus.
Meat-eaters, be warned. The excellent “Mercenaire” goes right alongside a British documentary about cow slaughtering (“Cow”), filmed completely without dialogue. But it got its message across quite clearly. So does “Mercenaire.”
Bravo, Pier-Philippe Chevigny!
