Milky Way gives us rare access to a human world where living organically in nature has nothing to do with nowadays nature-lovers, long-distance trekkers, or extreme sports practitioners. Shepherding in the Carpathian Mountains is a way of life, handed down through centuries of practices, skills, and attitudes—one that many a motivational guru would like to achieve.
Far beyond the “new organic agriculture” or anything new-age “slow-lifers” might imagine, for the shepherds moving their livestock hundreds of miles across the hills, it means a father and son sleeping rough, side by side, all year round, fighting bears, wolfs, or thiefs. Even in the deepest winter, they can never leave their thousands of sheep alone in the snow. They joke with serenity as the temperature drops into the minus teens and they prepare to bed down on a sheepskin in the snow beside their small campfire.
Meanwhile, alone in their mountain hut while she overwinters their cattle, for the wife intimate prayers and a weekly horse-drawn sleigh ride to the monastery provide stability amidst the lonely wilderness of the mountain, where she waits patiently for their younger children. They come home from boarding school once a week on foot, crossing 15 km of heavily snowed mountain tracks.
Made by a filmmaker native to this culture—well-known for his ability to make us live through the protagonists’ experiences—the film captures a people always eager to joke, both in their intimate solitude and during larger social events. Milky Way is a glimpse into, and a genuine record of, the spirit of an entire Carpathian sheep-breeding cultural ecosystem.
