"It was Extremely Brutal": Max Keegan on "The Shepherd and the Bear"

"High in the Pyrenees, a centuries-old way of life approaches its twilight amid a controversial rewilding scheme. France's government has for decades airlifted brown bears from Slovenia to repopulate those hunted out of existence by the region's hunters. But the bears are apex predators who threaten the flocks of a community of shepherds, whose earth-bound traditions don't readily coexist with state-mandated policy."

"Within this context, British filmmaker Max Keegan illuminates richly human connections with stirring observational portraiture in The Shepherd and the Bear, whose Academy Award-qualifying run begins Friday Nov. 21 at New York City's Cinema Village. Much more about the shepherds than the bears, the film found Keegan embedded with them fulltime for a couple of years during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, something that proved as essential to the production as serious hiking stamina."

"Writing about the documentary for Filmmaker after its world premiere at the Camden International Film Festival last year I suggested that "Keegan offers a fairly convincing answer to the proposition, 'What if Frederick Wiseman ... but a mountain goat? The often arduous experience of sharing day-to-day existence with these indelible characters permeates the images, which come insistently alive in the high-altitude light." Most memorable is Yves, "a chain smoking, hard-drinking, scabrous walking legend who appears as if summoned out of another era.""

Centuries-old shepherding traditions in the Pyrenees are under pressure from a government-led rewilding program that airlifts brown bears from Slovenia to repopulate the range. The reintroduced bears act as apex predators and pose direct threats to shepherds' flocks and livelihoods, creating conflict between earth-bound pastoral practices and state policy. Filmmaker Max Keegan spent years embedded with local shepherds, documenting daily life during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic with observational portraiture. The film centers on human relationships, endurance and memorable characters such as Yves, and opened an Academy Award-qualifying run in New York City.

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