![\"poster\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/shepherds-2024-poster.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nTrading a Montreal office for the mountains of southern France sounds like a fresh start. For the young man at the centre of Shepherds, it becomes a demanding lesson in the distance between imagining a simpler life and living one.<\/p>\n
Chinook Film Group will present the award-winning French-Canadien drama for one night only on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m. at the Cochrane Movie House, 218 5th Ave.<\/p>\n
Advance tickets are now available at the theatre\u2019s box office or online.<\/p>\n
A fresh start meets harsh realities<\/p>\n
Canadian actor F\u00e9lix-Antoine Duval plays Mathyas, a burned-out advertising executive who leaves his career behind to become a shepherd in Provence. Hoping to find purpose away from corporate pressures, he discovers a profession that demands far more than enthusiasm for the countryside.<\/p>\n
Gruelling work and the challenge of finding acceptance force him to reconsider his romantic expectations of rural life.<\/p>\n
His encounter with \u00c9lise, played by Sol\u00e8ne Rigot, offers a new direction. A civil servant who has also walked away from her job, she joins him on a journey through the mountains with a flock of sheep in their care.<\/p>\n
Together, they undertake a transhumance \u2014 the seasonal movement of livestock between grazing grounds \u2014 facing the demands of the terrain and responsibility for the animals as they work toward a different future.<\/p>\n
Chinook Film Group says the film also explores tensions surrounding the practice, including objections from naturalists.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Festival honours and a familiar director<\/p>\n
Directed by Sophie Deraspe and adapted from Mathyas Lefebure\u2019s semi-autobiographical novel D\u2019o\u00f9 viens-tu, berger?, Shepherds won best Canadian feature film at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and earned a place on TIFF\u2019s annual Canada\u2019s Top Ten list for 2024.<\/p>\n
The film went on to win four Iris awards at the 2025 Quebec Cinema Awards, recognizing its cinematography, sound, editing and original music.<\/p>\n
Deraspe\u2019s work will be familiar to longtime Chinook Film Group audiences. Her film Antigone was the group\u2019s final selection before the 2020 shutdown.<\/p>\n
Chinook has been bringing alternative and independent film to Cochrane since 2004.<\/p>\n
![\"banner\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/banner_1.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trading a Montreal office for the mountains of southern France sounds like a fresh start. For the young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-933122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}