Oct 15, 2025: Shepherds

Wednesday, Oct 14, 2025
7 pm @ Galaxy Cinemas, Sault Ste. Marie, ON

Director: Sophia Deraspe
Canada 2024
French; 113 min.

Following a medical wake-up call, Montréal copywriter Mathyas Lefebure abandons his life in Canada to reinvent himself as a sheep herder in the French Alps. Sophie Deraspe’s naturalistic, beautiful adaptation of the real-life Lefebure’s 2006 book is clear-eyed about the messy realities of a shepherding life, while also allowing us to see the wondrous spectacle that draws people to work on the land.

Winner of Best Canadian Feature Film Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (2024)

Life in the mountains of rural France is far from idyllic and comes with its own stresses and anxieties. [Shepherds] underscores it with strikingly evocative imagery of the landscape that dwells on the contradictions inherent in nature….. Namrata Joshi, The New Indian Express

It’s a twee, theme park version of Englishness, full of antiques and affable eccentrics. While not entirely without appeal, this is a film without an original idea in its head. Wendy Ide, Observer (UK)