Addicted to Sheep is the rather racy title of a charming documentary about a year in the life of a family on a hill farm in the north Pennines. This is not so much One Man and His Dog but one man, his wife, his two dogs, three children and flock of prize Swaledale sheep. Watching the film has the calming effect of a weekend in the country without the bother of travel, and the farmer’s world seems almost timeless: apart from the quad bike with a sheep dog balancing expertly on the back, we could be back in James Herriot territory.
The fleece-clad heroes are Tom and Kay Hutchinson, tenant farmers working their wellies off to make ends meet. They take great pride and joy in their work, breeding only the best because they cannot compete on an industrial scale. Their children, Jack, Esme and Hetty, are equally involved, and the sight of their tiny figures lifting heavy feed bags or rescuing a trapped sheep is moving and impressive.
Jack’s detailed disquisition on breeding the best tups (rams) and ewes is a great moment, as are interviews with local schoolchildren who worry about the price of diesel and winter feed, and want to be livestock auctioneers. “Livestock?” asks farmer Tom. “Deadstock is the problem!” — sometimes sheep just keel over for no reason in the Pennine winds.
This is the first feature from Magali Pettier, a farmer’s daughter from Brittany, who records the crunch of ice on winter mornings and steams her lens with the breath of cows, as well as providing more graphic footage of lambing. The result, however, is often more televisual than cinematic. In the annals of sheep films (if that’s your thing) the great anthropological epic is Sweetgrass (2009), shot in Montana, with the sheep filming themselves on GoPro head cameras.
Magali Pettier, PG, 85min