Winter Nomads

Pascal is fifty-three, Carole is twenty-eight, and both are shepherds. In November 2010 they set out on their winter transhumance: four months and six hundred kilometres with three donkeys, four dogs and eight hundred sheep, with a canvas sheet and animal skins for cover at night. The route runs through the Swiss cantons of Vaud and Fribourg. The film does not admire the landscape; it shows a trade that demands constant improvisation and unbroken attention to weather and animals, and it also records a country life shrinking fast, through the farmers they call on along the way. It is Manuel von Stürler’s first feature, and he had been a composer writing music for theatre. It screened at the Berlin film festival in 2012 and was named best documentary at the European Film Awards that year.