Shepherd | Moving shooting in the mountain pastures

Director Sophie Deraspe and her team recently finished shooting the feature film Shepherdslated for release in 2024. The Press attended three eventful days of filming in the grandiose landscapes of the French Alps.

(Beaufort, France) “Go for the sheep, Hola! File with the sheep. »

Félix-Antoine Duval’s command to the dog Hola slammed into the pure air of the Alpine mountains. All around the actor was then only silence, except for the sound of the wind and that of the bells hanging from the necks of the sheep which grazed without raising their heads.

The Québécois (who we saw in particular in the series Fragments) knew nothing of the reality of cattle ranchers, let alone that of French shepherds, when he agreed to play Mathyas, the lead role in the film Shepherdwritten and directed by Sophie Deraspe.

However, after having spent thirty days in the worn clothes of his character, Félix-Antoine Duval has learned a few notions of the trade, to the point of being able to direct (almost!) the dogs which guard the herd.

Freely inspired by the autobiographical novel Where are you from, shepherd? by Mathyas Lefebure, Shepherd tells the unusual story of a Montrealer, a real star in the world of advertising, who decides to leave everything behind to become a shepherd in Provence. His apprenticeship in a trade he knew nothing about would be done the hard way. The road to the realization of his pastoral dream will be filled with pitfalls, but also with significant encounters.

Play the game

It is in the Beaufortain region, near Albertville, that the team has set up its quarters for the final 11 days of filming. Here, the real shepherds Julien Valet and his wife Élodie keep a herd of 2000 heads. They agreed to play the film game for this Canadian-French production. Not without some initial fears.

Indeed, the production team had to work hard to convince shepherds and breeders to trust them.

Thus, the artistic designer André-Line Beauparlant worked for many months upstream to find people who agreed to receive a film crew on their land. Even more: people who agreed to lend their precious animals! “For them, the priority remains the herd. So we have to bend to their schedule without imposing ourselves, in addition to adapting to the weather and the storms that hit hard in the mountains,” says Sophie Deraspe.

André-Line Beauparlant adds: “To give the impression of a single herd on screen, we had to find five different ones! We also accompanied a shepherd, Jean-Pierre Ravel, during the transhumance of his herd. We walked with him for three days. It was extraordinary. But it took me a month of discussions to convince him. Jean-Pierre is a bit like the Mick Jagger of shepherds and he is one of the last to lead his herd from one mountain pasture to another on foot. »

It was during these three days of animal migration that Félix-Antoine Duval experienced one of the most moving experiences of filming. He witnessed the birth of a lamb that the mother left behind as soon as the birth was over to join the herd right away. “I took this extremely fragile little life into my hands. I talked to him. And when I gave it back to the shepherdess, I broke down in tears… It wasn’t my character who was crying, but me. “Everything was captured by the delicate camera of Sophie Deraspe…

This birth is one of the most beautiful unexpected events of this shoot, which has had several. Sophie Deraspe admits it bluntly: never in her career as a director has she had to deal with so many constraints. Sheep (sometimes very recalcitrant actors), dogs and the sometimes hostile nature of the Alps were all factors that could upset the plan of the day. “There are so many things that we don’t control! »

The stubbornness of sheep

The day of our arrival, the director wanted to capture images of the daily life of Mathyas the shepherd and his sidekick Élise. In this larger than life landscape, the team climbed the mountainside, equipment on their shoulders, to find the best angle of view, to vary the perspectives in this landscape where every square centimeter is of unreal beauty.

Julien (the real shepherd) led his herd from afar, multiplying the orders to his dogs. He hoped to pass it near the rock where the team was standing, but the sheep can be stubborn… They decided to go where no one was expecting them! The team’s efforts were not in vain: the mountain was generous with its splendours. But the hoped-for plan never materialized.

“We shoot in landscapes worthy of the Lord of the Rings, except that we are not going to add the actors – or the animals – virtually in the studio! “says Sophie Deraspe.

The same day, there was also the case of the dog Hola, who stubbornly refused to stay in the fake rain (spit from a tank truck) to play actress: not crazy, she preferred to take refuge in the dry, out of the frame and the action!

The day after this trying day, the herd of sheep decided to collaborate and descended the mountain right in front of the cameras. It is difficult to describe in words the astonishing spectacle of these hundreds of animals marching in unison, led by large white dogs – mostly Pyrenean mountain dogs, which the shepherds have baptized patous.

The vibrating life

Despite the difficulties of this filming, which was almost entirely done outdoors, Sophie Deraspe feels that her film touches on “life at its most vibrant”.

The emotion is all the more strong for the filmmaker as this project has been in the pipeline for a long time, that is to say 2016, the year in which she was approached by micro_scope to write the screenplay for this Canada-France co-production from an adaptation already made by Mathyas Lefebure.

Solène Rigot, the Parisian actress who plays Élise, was very touched on reading this story “of different heroism, a heroism that is not Manichean, which is rooted in life and its cycles”.

Sophie Deraspe, for her part, wishes to recall an important element in relation to her film: it is not just a story of shepherds, mountains and sheep. “It is first and foremost the story of someone who makes a radical choice to find their place in the world. An act of free will that remains very inspiring. Whether or not we know sheep.

The transportation costs for this report were paid by Air Transat.