Switzerland. Highly recommended
This is one of those times I was glad not to know a thing about the movie going in. Marion picked that day. From the title and a glance at the poster, I thought it was going to be one of those great movies about, like, yak herders in Mongolia. (Actually. I’ve seen some pretty good Mongolian movies that feature yaks, but not this year.) Anyway, it turns out to be a documentary is set in modern day Switzerland and documents some shepherds doing what they call a “transhumance” which good old Wikipedia says is the seasonal movement of people with their livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In this case it’s a couple of great looking people who really are real shepherds. They take a flock of 800 sheep around the Swiss countryside to fatten them up on fallow fields. For 4 months during winter, for real. They have great clothes. They have cool dogs. For most of the time, at least when there are no cars around, there is something eternal about this, it has to be something people have been doing for several thousand years, and there are not a lot of new ways to herd sheep. Its in Switzerland, but everyone speaks French. By the way, bell-wether is a sheep herding term. They put a bell on a wether, which is a castrated ram, and teach the to lead the flock, and also can find the flock in the dark or in fog. And the ram gets to live.
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