Shepherds

Bergers

Director: Sophie Deraspe
Country: Canada, France

German Premiere
2024 | 113 min. | French
Subtitles: German SDH, English
FSK | Nicht geprüft / No clearance

Cast_ Félix-Antoine Duval, Solène Rigot, Michel Benizri, David Ayala, Véronique Ruggia Saura Screenplay_ Sophie Deraspe, Mathyas Lefebure Camera_ Vincent Gonneville Producer_ Kim McCraw, Luc Déry, Élaine Hébert, Caroline Bonmarchand, Xenia Sulyma Rights_ Pyramide International

A romantic drop-out story between realism and idyll. Awarded Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Mathyas (Félix-Antoine Duval) works as an advertising copywriter in Montreal. After he suffers a burnout, he leaves his old life behind and makes a completely new start – as a shepherd in Provence. He has no idea what he is doing and his first experiences are disillusioning. But then Mathyas meets Élise (Solène Rigot), who works in the town council. Together they try to shepherd a flock of sheep through the summer in the middle of the Alps. Will their dream of a more simple life close to nature finally come true?

›Shepherds‹ is based on real experiences. And that’s palpable. However, it’s about more than that: when asked by French shepherds why he came there from Quebec, Mathyas describes Provence as the “cradle of pastoralism”. Here, the utopia, as represented by the shepherds’ idyll with its rich tradition in European art, is convincingly brought into the present.

Director

Like her characters, Sophie Deraspe comes from Quebec, a vital center of contemporary cinema. Starting with her debut, the mockumentary ›Missing Victor Pellerin‹ (2006), her cinematic works, on which she often acts as her own cinematographer, have blurred the boundary between documentary and fiction.

Trailer

Screenings