Winter Nomads

Pascal, 53, and Carole, 28, are shepherds. In the month of November 2010, they embark on their long winter transhumance: Four months during which they will have to cover 600 km in the Swiss-French region, accompanied by three donkeys, four dogs and a flock of eight hundred sheep. An exceptional adventure is about to begin: They brave the cold and the bad weather day in, day out, with a canvas cover and animal skins as their only shelter at night. This saga reveals a tough and exacting profession requiring constant improvisation and unflinching attention to nature, the animals and the cosmos. An odyssey through a region undergoing profound changes that render this kind of expedition more difficult every year, particularly when the grass for the sheep has to be found between villas, railroad tracks and industrial areas. An eventful journey with surprise encounters, moving reunions with farmer friends, nostalgic figures of a country life that is rapidly shrinking away. A film dominated by the strong personalities of Pascal and Carole, whose relationship and joie de vivre transform this transhumance into a magnificent hymn to freedom, at opposite extremes of our comfortable reality. WINTER NOMADS is an adventure film, a contemporary road movie, a reflection of our current world, which takes us back to our roots, not to mention some essential questions.