From E.T. and The BFG to The Neverending Story and Babe, the history of cinema is filled with many magical tales of humans forming unlikely friendships with their fellow creatures. Now, Okja, a new Netflix-backed film from celebrated Korean director Bong Joon-ho, has arrived to offer a brilliant, 21st-century take on the theme. The film begins in the glitzy headquarters of the Mirando Corporation, a food production giant helmed by a cloyingly girlish woman named Lucy Mirando (a brace-toothed Tilda Swinton). The latest in a line of corrupt heirs to the dynasty, Mirando Jr. announces to a journalist-packed room that she has discovered a “revolution in the livestock industry”: a synthesis of science and nature dubbed the "super pig", which will prove to be the company’s most environmentally friendly endeavour yet. A number of these creatures – a sort of hippo-pig hybrid, with floppy, elephant ears – have been shipped to rural farmers around the globe in an attempt to see which form of rearing will produce the most impressive, wholesome results. The farmers’ efforts, Mirando Jr. decrees, will be documented and judged by TV zoologist Dr. Johnny (played to maniacal, strung-out perfection by Jake Gyllenhaal) and the results will be announced in 10 years' time in New York.