(Toronto) World premiered in the Special Presentations section at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Shepherds marks Sophie Deraspe’s grand return to the Queen City, five years after she won the award for best Canadian film for Antigone.
Director Sophie Deraspe walked the red carpet at the Bell TIFF Lightbox on King Street in Toronto on Saturday night for the world premiere of Shepherdsalong with her main star, Félix-Antoine Duval, as well as the author and co-writer Mathyas Lefebure. The filmmaker hopes that the location will bring luck to her new feature film, presented in the theater where she launched Antigone, in 2019.
A regular at festivals around the world, Sophie Deraspe makes no secret of the fact that TIFF is important for boosting a film’s career. “Toronto, for me, is a festival where I come to work,” Deraspe confides in an interview with The Pressshortly before the screening. “Yes, we are having a big premiere. Yes, the audience is warm and the theaters are full. But I am taking advantage of it to give interviews, meet people from the industry. There are expectations to sell Shepherds internationally. »
Canada-France co-productionShepherds is an adaptation of Mathyas Lefebure’s first book, Where do you come from, shepherd?, published in 2006 by Leméac. The story is inspired by the extreme experience of its author, a Montreal advertising copywriter who left everything behind to become a shepherd in the French Alps.
Life at the top
After a difficult start, Mathyas (Félix-Antoine Duval) will tame his new life in the mountains, helped by Élise (Solène Rigot), a French civil servant he met when he arrived in Provence. She will join him to help him watch over a flock of 800 sheep, with their faithful dog Hola. At the summit, they will find love, at the same time as they will enter into communion with nature.
While we understand that Mathyas left Montreal on a whim, after experiencing a serious existential crisis, the film does not specify the trigger for this sudden departure. “Mathyas feels his life changing even in his body,” explains the filmmaker. “He needs to connect with the earth, the animals, the living. I think people will understand his choice.”
PHOTO PROVIDED BY HOUSE 4:3
Director Sophie Deraspe presented her new feature film as a world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on Saturday night.
Without having the call to be a shepherd, we all ask ourselves, one day or another, the question if we are leading the life we really want. Or if we are only fulfilling obligations, responsibilities, imposed schedules.
Sophie Deraspe
“If the world is going to collapse around me, why not become a shepherd?” Mathyas will say. The film shows us images of breathtaking landscapes. We also feel the warmth of the Provençal sun, the harshness of pastoral life, the smell of animals. “But it’s not just a story of a shepherd, mountains and sheep,” Deraspe emphasizes. “It’s above all the odyssey of a being who chooses to find his place on this planet. He becomes a shepherd to escape the madness of the materialistic world. To reconnect with the earth, with the living.”
PHOTO PROVIDED BY HOUSE 4:3
Félix-Antoine Duval with the director, during filming in the French Alps
Work before filming
Of course, Mathyas’ quest will be arduous. The young man will go through dramas and trials. However, he will end up flourishing in his pastoral life.
The creator of Shepherds also took several years to complete this film. She has been working on the project since 2016. “There was the pandemic and we encountered several obstacles along the way,” she says. “And we wanted to prepare well before shooting in France.”
The director went to the field a few times. She met the inhabitants of the region a year before starting filming. The filming was done with respect for the way of life of the shepherds and the locals. Real shepherds play their own roles. And of course, there were hundreds of sheep that do not let themselves be led easily… “We had to be always alert and show great flexibility,” she sums up.
It is worth noting that, despite the violence and brutality of some scenes, no animals were harmed in the process. “Nature is brutal, cruel. It accepts that things transform, disappear and are reborn,” says the filmmaker, who sees a philosophical and spiritual side to Mathyas’ adventure. “It is not for nothing that the mountain is associated with the mystical. There is a force, a power that forces us to accept that the world is bigger than us.”
Distributed by Maison 4:3, Shepherds will be released in theaters in Quebec on November 15, after being presented at the opening of the 30e edition of the Cinémania film festival, on November 6, in Montreal. The release in France is scheduled for spring 2025.
The costs for this report were paid in part by Telefilm Canada, which had no say over its content.
Drama
Shepherds
Sophie Deraspe
With Félix-Antoine Duval and Solène Rigot. Based on the book by Mathyas Lefebure.
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