Critic Reviews

• Jason Anderson, Toronto Star

  If there's anything we can learn from the creatures here, it's that any day in which you don't get stripped of your coat or eaten by a bear is probably a good one.

• Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail

  There are audience rewards for sticking with the herd and its lonesome cowboys.

• Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post

  It's a gorgeous and, believe it or not, riveting documentary...about sheep.

• Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News

  It may not be your thing, but Sweetgrass is unlike anything you'll see in a theater this year. It bravely strays from the flock.

• Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

  Filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor rigorously follow the cinema-verité creed: no sonorous Morgan Freeman voiceovers, no explanatory intertitles until the finale, just carefully observed reality.

• Ty Burr, Boston Globe

  If you're used to the ADD pace of modern filmmaking, Sweetgrass will probably drive you crazy. If you can adjust, it could widen your soul.

• Alistair Harkness, Scotsman

  As it progresses it begins to strike a subtly elegiac, unsentimental tone...

• , Total Film

  Unadorned by narrative or score, it's an unsentimental portrayal of a fading way of life and the peaceful creatures under its charge.

• Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph

  A tenaciously observed and a quietly absorbing ethnography about a pair of shepherds leading some 3,000 sheep on a 150-mile journey up into Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains for summer pasture.

• Philip French, Guardian [UK]

  The images, including sheep on the move up near vertical hills, are remarkable, the landscape spectacular, the unsentimental account of back-breaking, backside-aching work impressive.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  If Avatar was last year's best-looking film, 2011's award may well go to a documentary shot for small change concerning sheep. No, really.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  This beautiful and hypnotic documentary shows the agony and the ecstasy of herding sheep up into Montana's Beartooth mountains for the summer pasture.

• Dominic Radcliffe, Little White Lies

  It would be foolish not to experience this film.

• Derek Malcolm, This is London

  I have no doubt that, come the end of the year, Sweetgrass will be on the "10 Best" lists. It is that memorable for pictorial, cultural and even moral reasons.

• Antonia Quirke, Financial Times

  Sweetgrass is probably the definition of niche, but one dedicated to some of the highest ideals of film: it brings us information from a place we've never been, and with a rapturous innocence.

• Jeffrey Chen, Window to the Movies

  The movie is decidedly no frills, and it both lives and dies by this strict adherence to its protocol.

• Tim Brayton, Antagony & Ecstasy

  A documentary of uncommon elegance and abstract expression... What always impresses about the movie is its here-and-nowness.

• Jennifer Merin, About.com

  Sweetgrass is a film of record about the American West. It documents, pays tribute to a fast-fading way of life. You want 'True Grit?' This is it!

• Robert Roten, Laramie Movie Scope

  Entertaining, despite its slow pace and general lack of dialogue and music. It is plain, but strong.

• Christopher Long, Movie Metropolis

  An intoxicating audiovisual experience and a sprawling story that encompasses nothing less than the seasons, birth and death.

Read all 22 critic reviews