Shepherds – TIFF Canada’s Top Ten 2024
February 5 to February 9, 2025
FILM FESTIVAL
Canada's Top Ten 2024
TIFF Canada's Top Ten
AWARDS
Best Canadian Feature Film
A Montreal copywriter moves to France intending to become a shepherd in Shepherds. After a medical scare, Mathyas Lefebure (Félix-Antoine Duval) decides to abandon his life coming up with advertising slogans in Montreal and relocates to Provence, France intending to become a shepherd and write a book about his experience. Multiple local sheep farmers give Mathyas a chance and his adventures on the field attract the attention of civil servant Élise (Solène Rigot). Together, they embark on the daring task of spending the summer up a mountain, caring for a flock of 800 sheep.
Shepherds Synopsis
Shepherds is a drama written and directed by Sophie Deraspe (Antigone), based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Mathyas Lefebure. The film stars Félix-Antoine Duval as Mathyas, a Canadian ex-pat who decides to abandon his old life and become a shepherd. He shares this adventure with Élise, played by Solène Rigot, whom Mathyas meets when he attempts to get a work permit. Getting work on three very different farms, Mathyas comes to learn that a shepherd’s life doesn’t distinguish between work and play.
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At its core, Shepherds is a film about the trials and tribulations of switching from city life to one in the wilderness. Throughout the film, the protagonist Mathyas Lefebure begins as a quite incompetent shepherd but soon approves under the tutelage of the elder Ahmed (Michel Benizri). While Shepherds includes a romantic thread of Mathyas and former civil servant Élise finding love in the fields of the mountain, the film also doesn’t shy away from the less-than-ideal aspects of shepherd life, such as wolf attacks and having to put down injured sheep. Altogether, Shepherds is an introspective look at this nomadic life.
