An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana's breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture, revealing a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.
Cinematography
Handheld 16mm that makes Montana look like another planet.
Sound
Baaa-ing symphony and wind — no score needed.
Direction
Harvard anthropologists turned filmmakers, zero narration.
Director
Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The directors lived with the herders for three summers and shot 200+ hours of footage, much of it while herding sheep themselves.
This was one of the last sheep drives in the American West; the Allestad ranch sold its herd in 2003, making the film an accidental historical document.
US
