Dir: Max Keegan | Doc
Rural life in the remote French region of Ariège has remained largely unchanged since the 19th Century. Towns like Albi are off the tourist track and restaurants menus still serve classics dishes in the traditional way.
The Shepherd and the Bear is an observational film documenting the reintroduction of wild brown bears to a traditional mountain shepherding community. Purely observational and beautifully shot the film is a study of tradition, wilderness, and the fragile ties between people and the land where herders still graze their flocks in the grassy Spring foothills of the Pyrenees helped by their Collies and mountain dogs. This peaceful pastoral is now challenged by bears that were believed extinct by the 1990s making breeding no longer possible.
There certainly seems a place for bears deep in the bosky French countryside. The French government maintains there were always a few, but that by the 1990s they had declined to the point where there was no longer a viable breeding population: bears are largely herbivores that they do require a small amount of protein.
The protein must come from somewhere, and small animals, including lambs and calves provide the natural answer but clearly bears’ eyes are sometimes bigger for their stomachs, so the appearance of a half-eaten sheep, sometimes still alive, makes a grim but increasingly regular morning discovery for elderly herder Yves who has grown up in the mountains learning his craft from his father before him. But herding faces an uncertain future with the younger generation migrating to the cities in search of an urban comforts. The rural life seems appealing at first but director Max Keegan shows how it is often just as fraught as the city, although the bright lights tempt the young.
This even-handed documentary deals with the forces at work that are dividing the community. The authorities are keen to maintain a balanced ecosystem but the locals fear for their livelihoods, largely derived from herding. Bears have become emboldened since they last roamed the region and are no longer spooked by people or even machinery and the locals feel threatened not only for their livestock but also for themselves in this new battle for territory.
The mist-capped hills are often shrouded in dense fog making it difficult to see the danger lurking ahead for both man and beast, so the arrival of a predator if often sudden and unavoidable. Back in the village a teenager, keen to make a life in the mountainside is practising his wildlife photography. But this is an exception; Yves’ granddaughter has no inclination to become a shepherd and leaves his mountain cabin after a brief apprenticeship, aiming for the local town. So Yves must pass on his way of life to an outsider, and may have found one. Meanwhile the older generation struggles on slaughtering a pig and using every part of the animal in their diet. This observational film documenting the reintroduction of wild brown bears to a traditional mountain shepherding community. Purely observational and beautifully shot the film is a study of tradition, wilderness, and the fragile ties between people and the land.
In UK cinemas on February 6, 2026