Be An Animal Advocate / Films / Movies

Bold Native, A Film About Animal Liberation

by Jennie Richards · Published December 5, 2022 · Updated March 11, 2023

Bold Native is a fiction feature film made on a shoestring budget and self-financed by a small group of committed artists and activists. Made by four new young film-makers, this film can stand up to any Hollywood film out there with a fast-paced, tension-filled plot, strong characters, a moving script, a great soundtrack, real-life relationships and situations, and importantly addressing one of the deepest moral issues of our time.

The film follows Charlie Cranehill, a radical animal rights activist, committed to animal liberation and animal rights at all costs, and wanted by the U.S. government for domestic terrorism who is facing lifetime imprisonment for property crimes under the recently passed Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), if caught.

Charlie asserts early in the film, “Our mission is simple:

Liberate animals from places of abuse
Inflict economic damage on those who profit from their misery and exploitation
Reveal those atrocities to the public
Never harm anyone – human or nonhuman
Follow these rules and you are a member of the Animal Liberation Front”

For two years, Charlie travels the U.S. in a quest to put together the largest list of animal activist/liberators ever created so he can employ them in large-scale animal liberation projects. While plotting and scheming his largest action ever, his estranged CEO father tries to find him before the FBI does. Concurrently, the film follows a young woman working for an animal welfare organization fighting within the system to establish more humane treatment of farmed animals. The film presents the real-world conflict of two different approaches to helping exploited animals, one through improving animal welfare and the other addressing the rights of animals as beings. The underlying theme of the film supports the moral rights and value of animals as beings, and that we have a moral obligation as a society to stop inflicting unnecessary suffering and cruelty on animals used for food, science, research, pleasure or entertainment.

From abolitionists to welfarists, Bold Native takes on the issue of modern animal use and exploitation from several angles within the context of a road movie adventure story.

Length of Film: 1 Hour / 45 Minutes

Originally Launched: 2010

More About the Film

Buy the DVD

Buy the Soundtrack

Watch the Film in full HD, then share the film on social media

Share the Trailer on social media

See more on the Bold Native website

Take Action

The easiest and most immediate thing you can do to help reduce animal suffering is to go vegan. Veganism is a diet and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or for any other purpose.
Don’t wear or buy leather, fur, wool, silk or other clothing made from animals’ bodies.
Avoid cosmetic, household and beauty/body products and cleaners that are tested on animals, look for “cruelty free” products that show the Leaping Bunny
Volunteer and donate to farm animal sanctuaries. They rescue farm animals from cruelty, suffering and sickness, and they need your support and help.
Become an animal rights activist and advocate for animals well being and liberation; for raising consciousness about animal cruelty done to farm animals, and for advocating for veganism and a vegan lifestyle. Look for a local animal rights group you can get directly involved with and start today!
Support the animal rights activists who are serving prison terms under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (as discussed in Bold Native), while others have been convicted under other laws. These individuals have made a selfless sacrifice to defend the voiceless. They are imprisoned for their compassion for animals. Help them maintain their spirits by writing letters and/or donating money to their commissary or legal defense.

Quotes From the Film

“If we deny freedom to the quiet ones, those that have no voice, can you be free yourself? Or are you caged by your own lack of compassion?”

“If we start building the cages, our hearts will die.”

“They say freedom isn’t free, that’s absolutely God-damn right!”

“A few years ago I become someone who said “yes!” My fight … my problem … tonight!”

“ …. is not a person, it’s an idea – that animals are not property, they are not ours to use, they are an end unto themselves, their freedom is beautiful and their slavery is a horror.”

“Isn’t that what your whole system is based on? … Animals are property — so somehow killing them isn’t violence? So it’s … processing, rendering or confinement, anything to keep from calling it what it really is — it’s beef not cow, pork not pig. Your whole system is a lie, a filthy lie.”

“They live in unbearable pain and loneliness, just so the corporations can make a little more money, make a few more cents than the other guy. You think you’re stinking evil makes no impact? You think billions of animals a year don’t matter? Believe me, they do.”

“The All-Star List are — Lobbyists, industrial farm owners, slaughterhouse owners, breeding facility owners, laboratory owners, USDA supervisors, congress people, government officials, fast food moguls, advertising executives — The very people who profit the most from the suffering of over 9 billion farm animals every year.”

“You know they kill male chicks even with free-range hens, the males are considered useless, so they feed them through a chipper machine still chirping for their moms.”

“The U.S. government has tried to make animal liberators ‘domestic terrorists’ because exposing the truth about how these corporations treat animals – hurts corporate profits.”

“Ag Gag laws are protecting state factory farms and slaughterhouses from being seen, filmed, documented – because several states in the U.S. now have passed laws to silence journalists, reporters, photographers, all from exposing the truth about how the animals are treated and what is happening to animals today on farms and in slaughterhouses.”

“George, a slaughterhouse owner, built a multi-million dollar business off animal cruelty for food and talks about how they take a hammer to pigs heads, and take a hose and stick it down the pig’s throat to flood it. How they smash the pigs against the wall. How his workers asked to turn the stunner voltage down, which left the pigs fully conscious and alive for the many minutes they go upside down along the slaughter line completely alive and feeling all that is done to them, screaming in pain and terror the whole way.”