Vegan Couple Turn Wedding Day Into Animal Rights Protest & Movie
A vegan couple in Switzerland is making an animal rights documentary that includes protests, open rescues, and arrests, all around their vegan wedding day
Los Angeles, May 25, 2023 — Anja and Matej Glivar got married in Switzerland on April 4, 2022, in what is arguably one of the world’s wildest weddings ever! The wedding itself was 100% vegan. No shocker there. But, they also turned their wedding day into an eye-popping display of animal rights activism that included rescuing some lambs from a farm, bridal screams and a bike crash. It was all caught on tape and will soon be coming to a theater near you! Their wild wedding documentary film is titled Humankindness: The Animal Dilemma, and they’re doing a fundraising campaign to finish the film and get it out to the world
Anja is a nurse from Switzerland and Matej is a content creator from Slovenia. They fell in love at an animal rights workshop. The film follows their inspiring mission to have a completely vegan wedding while carrying out animal rights actions. The documentary will feature exclusive interviews with various vegan and non-vegan notables, farmers, influencers, vegan celebrities and ordinary people who say they love animals but still eat them. Hence, the animal dilemma.
This extraordinary vegan couple was interviewed by UnchainedTV’s Jane Velez-Mitchell. UnchainedTV was the very first media outlet to show clips of the upcoming film publicly. This never-before-seen footage is captivating. You can find the entire conversation and the film clips here:
From Vegan Wedding to Animal Rights Documentary
This vegan couple had already been involved in animal rights activism for five years when they got engaged. Anja explains how they got the idea to transform their wedding into a documentary:
“We said, ‘okay, the wedding, it’s like the most important day of our life, but we want this to be for the animals who are suffering every day, and we want to make this day count and make the masses look at what is really happening’. So, we started to talk. First, we wanted to do mainly an open rescue because this is my background of activism. Then we kept talking, and Matej said, ‘let’s make a documentary for Netflix.’”
This audacious idea grew and grew, and they finally decided to create a whole weekend filled with actions for animals. Matej explains it:
“We had three days of action. The day before we got married we saved 12 chickens from the farm. Then, just after the registry office, we went to save four sheep…then, two days later, our biggest action that we did was to get two dead animals from the farms that we found together, and we brought them to the church for a peaceful protest.”
About 40 activists joined that peaceful protest. The police showed up and arrested Matej. He spent seven hours in jail while Anja and the rest of the activists staged a funeral for the two dead animals.
“I was studying to be a police officer because I always have been for justice, for the right thing to do, but when you do the right thing for the victims, in this case, the animals, you are thrown into jail.” — Matej Glivar, activist and documentary maker
Legal Consequences for this Intrepid Vegan Couple
Because of their daring actions around their wedding day, in particular the “open rescue” of lambs destined to be slaughtered for Easter— all of it recorded for the documentary — this vegan couple may end up paying a heavy price in the Swiss judicial system. There have been several recent acquittals in the US regarding “open rescue,” in which people assert the right to rescue suffering, sick and injured animals from farms, slaughter trucks and slaughterhouses, much as one would break a window to rescue a suffering dog trapped in a hot car. Anja explains that “open rescue” is not as familiar a topic in her country:
“In Switzerland, I think it’s still not completely clear what is happening with these kinds of cases because there were not big animal rights cases like in the US. So, we did not get the verdict yet, and they really need a long time for this. Then, we will see if they really put a hard line, or if they somehow will make it easier for us.”
But, in the meantime, the documentary needs to be finished, so the vegan couple is crowdfunding it so they can continue recording the remaining 50% of the footage. Matej explains what the status of that is:
“We met Darren Cavanagh who is our producer now and he helped us a lot with many things because he helped in movies like Kill Bill, Lion King, and Wall-E. Through him, and also other people, we got the idea that this movie can be really bigger than we initially thought, and also, out of this vegan bubble. We had planned it for three months, but now it’s 15 months. “
You can be a part of this unique film by donating via IndieGoGo.
“We want to touch people by being entertaining, by being an inspiring couple who people can resonate with so that they, when the film ends, feel like, ‘gosh, these two people, they do a lot, what can I do for the world?’” — Anja Glivar, activist and documentary maker
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