Sweetgrass (2009)

Sweetgrass: Directed by Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing-Taylor. In the summer of 2003, a group of shepherds took a herd of sheep one final time through the Beartooth Mountains of Montana, in the extreme north-west of the United States. It was a journey of almost three hundred kilometres through expansive green valleys, by fields of snow, and across hazardous, narrow ridges – a journey brimming with challenges. The aging shepherds do their very best to keep the hundreds of sheep together; the panoramic high mountains are teeming with hungry wolves and grizzly bears.

“In Montana, ranchers are caring for their sheep. They get sheared. They get fed. There are births. After the winter, the ranchers take the herd through the summer pasteurs on public lands in the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains. It is 2003 and it is the last band of sheep.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis is a little zen. It brings the audience into the sheep ranch. It takes us into the herd. I donu0026#39;t even want to have the ranchers talk. The main drawback is that it is not necessarily a 100 minutes worth of attention. I got antsy by the midway point. It would be a better hour-long TV show. The scenery is epic. It has beautiful vast vistas and also the gritty small pictures.”