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Hiver nomade (Winter nomads)

Manuel von Stürler
90' / 2012 / Switzerland
Web: http://www.hivernomade.ch/en/
French
English and spanish subtitled

Audience vote 8.06

Pascal, 53, and Carole, 28, are shepherds. In the month of November 2010, they embark on their long winter transhumance: four months during which they will have to cover 600 km in the Swiss-French region, accompanied by three donkeys, four dogs and a eight hundred sheep.
An exceptional adventure is about to begin: they brave the cold and the bad weather day in day out, with a canvas cover and animal skins as their only shelter at night. This saga reveals a tough and exacting profession requiring constant improvisation and unflinching attention to nature, the animals and the cosmos.
An odyssey through a region undergoing profound changes that render this kind of expedition more difficult every year, particularly when the grass for the sheep has to be found between villas, railroad tracks and industrial areas. An eventful journey with surprise encounters, moving reunions with farmer friends, nostalgic figures of country life that is shrinking away fast.
A film dominated by the strong personalities of Pascal and Carole, whose relationship and joie de vivre transform this transhumance into a magnificent hymn to freedom, at opposite extremes of our comfortable reality.
Winter Nomads is an adventure film, a contemporary road movie, a reflection of our current world, which takes us back to our roots and our inner questions.

Main Festivals & Awards

Mejor Documental / Best Documentary - 2012 European Film Academy
Mejor Fotografía y mejor Montaje / Camara and Editing - Prix du Cinema Suisse 2013, Quartz
Premio ET3 / ET3 Avard - Doc Fest Thessalonique 2013
Selección Oficial / Official Selection - Goteborgiff 2013

Director's Biography

Manuel von Stürler was born in 1968 in Lausanne with Swiss and French nationality. After having studied the trombone at the Music Academy of Neuchâtel and at the Jazz and Contemporary Music School in Lausanne, Manuel von Sturler performs live a wide repertory, from classical to jazz and contemporary music. He plays regularly with artists such as the Philippe Lang Group, Malcolm Braff, Leon Francioli, Stéphane Blok. He composes music scores for theatre and stage performances.
Together with Arthur Besson, he founds the DUO MATò Company with the aim to focus on the music as a central element in the narrative and artistic process of a theatrical play. Their approach has brought to them stage directors such as Dominique Bourquin, Denis Maillefer and Fabrice Gorgerat.
The fact of exploring such various artistic fields includes also the aim of discovering the world. He did so, together with his companion and their two children, totalizing two years of nomadic journeys, in the Middle East, Persia, Eastern Europe, Iceland, Bolivia, Chile and Patagonia. It gave him the opportunity to rediscover and practice another of his passion: photography.
He made several films on a personal level before being commissioned as a professional to direct his first corporate film for a major company, Securitas.

In 2008, he starts his feature documentary project HIVER NOMADE. World premiere at the 62nd Berlinale 2012 (Forum).

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