Writer/director Leslie Megahey [left in above picture] about the film:

"My film is a very unusual story. When I first started thinking about it, I realised this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, something as new as this falls into your lap, an historical period so unusual and so closed, and I hope the film will reflect that.

There were lots of animal trials in the Middle Ages. Some of them were ecclesiastical: an animal would be tried, and then ex-communicated or anathematised for destroying a harvest. But most of them where civil cases, resulting from an animal running amok and destroying property or killing someone. The animal's defence was paid for by the state, and it was kept in the same prison as humans while awaiting trial. The law said all prisoners had to be treated in the same way and be given the same food, and that was applied to the animals as well." [Stockholm Film Festival, 1994]

Megahey chose his leading pig carefully: "I avoided the nice, fat P.G Wodehouse kind of pig. I wanted a pig with sinister potential." Sally, a cross between a wild boar and a Tamworth pig, fitted the bill perfectly: "You look into her eyes and you don't know what is behind them, just that strange, direct stare." [The Times, Januari 1994]

* Alongside his own filmmaking, Leslie Megahey has been producer, executive producer or editor of many prestigious series on British television. He was appointed Head of Music and Arts for BBC Television in 1988.