The Last Shepherd

Renato Zucchelli walks the outskirts of Milan with his sheep. He is looking for somewhere to graze the flock. The city lays down a little more concrete every year. Finding grass keeps getting harder. The shepherd still sets out each morning. The documentary follows his working day step by step. The camera stays with him along the road. Zucchelli mixes the real and the invented as he talks. The film holds the real and the fabled side by side. It was invited to more than a hundred festivals around the world. Near the end more than seven hundred sheep walk into the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. The flock really was brought into the city centre for that scene. The paved square turns into pasture for a moment. The image reminds a city audience of a life it has left behind. The film does not treat herding as work that belongs to the past. Renato Zucchelli and Piero Lombardi appear in the seventy eight minute documentary. It is an Italian production Marco Bonfanti finished in 2013.