Heard from Herders

An exploration into the early history of Australian herding

Join Athena, the majestic matriarch, as she leads her elephant herd across an unforgiving African landscape.

In 2016, videos showing the slaughter conditions of farm animals shocked the public opinion, who quickly forgot about them. With complicit gaze, Elsa Maury films a young shepherd’s relationship of co-dependence with her flock of ewes, which she must learn to slaughter under the best possible conditions.

On a tabletop mountain a mahout and his strange herd make a surprising and never-ending journey.

Ben (Glenn Ford) and Marion (Henry Fonda) are two cowboys who make a meager living breaking wild horses. Their frequent employer Jim (Chill Wills), who always gets the better of them, talks them into taking a nondescript horse in lieu of some of their wages. Ben finds that the horse is un-rideable, he comes up with the idea of taking it to a rodeo and betting other cowhands they cannot ride it.

Yellowbird lives in the ruins of an old house. He lacks the confidence to leave his home, no matter how much Bug, his labybird friend, tries to convince him to go out into the world. Attempts to toughen him up have had little success, so Bug seizes an opportunity that leaves Yellowbird unexpectedly finding himself the new leader of the flock that is migrating to Africa. Still, lacking faith in his own abilities and with danger and imminent failure lurking around every corner, our feathered hero is forced to either find the strength required to work with the team or bow out and stay hidden away forever.

Down-and-out cowhand Jim Garry is asked by his old friend Tate Riling to help mediate a cattle dispute. When Garry arrives, however, it soon becomes clear that Riling has not been entirely forthright. Garry uncovers Riling's plot to dupe local rancher John Lufton out of a fortune. When Lufton's firecracker of a daughter, Amy, gets involved, Garry must choose between his old loyalties and what he knows to be right.

In India, Toomai, a young mahout, helps lead the British on a large expedition to round up wild elephants.

Because of a local blood feud, a peasant family decides to sell its sheep - a most precious commodity - in far away Ankara. During their long train ride, bribes must be paid to petty officials, sheep are stolen or die in the packed, airless wagons, and the sick wife of one of the family's sons becomes deathly ill.

Unable to legally capture and sell a herd of protected wild horses, corrupt rancher Rance Macgowan uses his trained killer horse, Volcano, to substitute for the real leader of the herd and cause havoc and death among the ranches. With the government about to drop the restrictions on rounding up the herd, the Three Mesquiteers find themselves in the middle of the controversy after their friend, Sheriff Miller is killed by Volcano.

The documentary tells the story of journalist Vladimir Herzog, nicknamed Vlado, who has been tortured and murdered during the repression years of Brazilian military dictatorship.