Director David MacDougall
Country/Production Italy / Australia
Release 1993
Length 100 mins
Format Colour / DVD / PAL / All region
Location Sardinia / Europe
Ethnic Group Sardinian
Collection MacDougall
Prizes/Commendations Basil Wright Film Prize 1994
Order No RAI-200.311
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This film depicts the characters, and social dilemmas of three generations of Sardinian mountain shepherds. Although born roughly 20 years apart, Franchiscu (62), his son Pietro (17) and their friend Miminu (43) are united by ties of family, friendship and common experience. But increasingly these ties are being pulled apart by social and economic circumstance. The youngest, still a schoolboy, is likely to leave shepherding because he has more choices than the two older men have had. They have been committed to their way of life, but for one it has meant celibacy, and for the other, other kinds of hardships.The film makes clear aspects of the transformation of pastoral communities by the squeeze of falling prices for produce, coupled with the attraction of social mobility out of pastoralism via education, or the shorter hours of conventionally waged jobs.
