Brotherhood

A Powerful Noise

2008

Bookended by call-to-action quotes from Margaret Mead and Mahatma Gandhi, this inspiring documentary follows three extraordinary women -- in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mali, and Vietnam -- as they lead day-to-day battles against ignorance, poverty, oppression, and ethnic strife.

The Shepherdess

“The shepherdess” is a short ethnographic film inspired by Joyce, an 80 year old woman who has spent her whole life farming in Eastern Ontario. While this film is largely centred on Joyce’s narrative about her life, it is also about Joyce’s flock of about 20 Suffolk ewes, the filmmaker, and the relationships between these actors.

Notes from Sheepland

2024 · ★ 8

Orla Barry is a hard-working, lipstick-wearing sheep farmer in rural Wexford. She is also a visual artist, renowned for her video and sound art. She strides confidently from art seminars to the Tullamore Show, lambing in April and shearing in June, working tirelessly to make a living from eco-farming in the face of global demand for faster, cheaper meats and wools. But while tied to the demands of the ovine calendar she must make time to let her creativity flow.

The Seasons

1975 · ★ 6.9

The last collaboration of Artavazd Peleshian and cinematographer Mikhail Vartanov is a film-essay about Armenia's shepherds, about the contradiction and the harmony between man and nature, scored to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Kiss the Brother

2009

Documentary about the massacre of Bosniak army committed over soldiers of Republika Srpska during 1990s Bosnian wars.

The Shepherds of Berneray

1981 · ★ 7

In 1980, Jack Shae and Allen Moore, two ethnographic filmmakers from Harvard University, moved their families to the island of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. Over the course of 18 months they documented the everyday lives and struggles of the crofters they lived among, whom were even then a vanishing breed. The film is in English and Gaelic. This carefully observed documentary by filmmakers Jack Shae and Allen Moore is a poetic ethnographic film in the style of their mentor, Robert Gardner (“Dead Birds”). It follows the rhythm of life on a wind-swept island in the Outer Hebrides through the four seasons and in the filmmakers’ observation of the day-to-day struggles of a vanishing society we see the deep-time legacy of their kind. The film is in English and Gaelic.

Considering the Ends

2020 · ★ 7.7

In 2016, videos showing the slaughter conditions of farm animals shocked the public opinion, who quickly forgot about them. With complicit gaze, Elsa Maury films a young shepherd’s relationship of co-dependence with her flock of ewes, which she must learn to slaughter under the best possible conditions.

Sky Above Srebrenica

2012 · ★ 10

On 11th of July 1995, the most mortifying crimes after World War II in Europe destroyed the Bosnian town of Srébrenica. Shootings and deportations beyondimagination were preceded by a betrayal of humaity: while 40,000 civilians were looking into the sky of Srébrenica, waiting for a sign from the international community, guaranteeing their protection, the headquarters of the United Nations decided to surrender. The betrayal kill 8,372 men, women and children. Sky above Srebrenica (101 minutes) is based on protocols of the secret crisis meetings of the UN headquarters. In a unique way never before released original material of the consequences is shown next to those who are responsible for these.

A Shepherd

2024 · ★ 7.5

Félix, a young, melancholic and secretive shepherd, leads a surprisingly timeless life. He lives alone and works along his father to raise the family herd. From autumn to spring, he looks after his animals, feeds them and keeps them in the dense forests of holm oaks of French Pre-Alps. In the summer, he travels on foot for more than two hundred kilometres, leaving his father to lead the herd to the mountains pastures, in the High Alps Ubaye valley. There, he lives far from everything for many long months, in a mineral and inaccessible world where an invisible being prowls: the wolf. Against the tide of his time, Félix has chosen a profession that isolates him and keeps him out of the world.

Mladí muži poznávají svět

1996 · ★ 7

The docu-drama takes place during the war in the former Yugoslavia. A young journalist arrives in destroyed Sarajevo and finds out how people live in the middle of war. He encounters everyday problems that an individual, especially young people, has to deal with.

Pour the Water as I Leave

2026

A surreal exploration of the war in Bosnia told through the unbreakable spirit of seven of her people whose strength to leave was as powerful as the fight to stay. Through the lens of diaspora, the film captures not just the weight of displacement, but the defiant act of survival and the unwavering pursuit of home, no matter where the journey leads.

Kiss the Future

2024 · ★ 6.4

An exploration of the perils of nationalism and art’s role as a weapon of resistance and activism throughout the 1990s Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. Explore how art and music sustained hope, thanks in part to humanitarians and the band U2.