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The Ghosts In Our Machine

With the exception of our companion animals and a few wild and stray species within our urban environments, we experience animals daily only as the food, clothing, animal-tested goods and entertainment we make of them. This moral dilemma is often hidden from our view.

This multi-award winning documentary gently removes our blinders by illuminating the lives of individual animals living within and rescued from the machine of our modern world. Through the heart and photographic lens of acclaimed photographer Jo-Anne McArthur, we become intimately familiar with a cast of non-human animals. The film follows Jo-Anne over the course of a year as she photographs animal stories in North America and in Europe. Each story is a window into global animal industries: Food, Fashion, Entertainment and Research. THE GHOSTS IN OUR MACHINE charts McArthur's efforts to bring wider attention to a topic that most of humankind strives hard to avoid. Are non-human animals property to be owned and used, or are they sentient beings deserving of rights?