This evening at 8 p.m., the Instituto Francés of Madrid will premiere in its theater the film Hasta la montaña (Bergers), directed by Sophie Deraspe. Book at this link. Screening in the original version subtitled in Spanish. The premiere of this film will take place on February 27.
Hasta la montaña, a traditional drama of French-Canadian nationality, is a sensitive story about breaking with an established life and the search for a more essential meaning. The film follows a young man who leaves Montreal to become a shepherd in Provence, facing hard work and an untamed nature. Between physical learning and inner transformation, Hasta la montaña offers the intimate and universal portrait of a desire for another life. A cinematic experience to live on the big screen.
On a sudden impulse, Mathyas changes his life from publicist in Montreal to pastor in Provence. He hoped to find peace, but discovers an exhausting profession and often farmers at the edge. When he meets Élise, who has also left everything behind, a flock of 800 sheep is entrusted to them and they embark on a transhumance. Together, they will pass through the mountain’s trials and shape a new life.
Sophie Deraspe is a director and screenwriter from Quebec, who is situated on the border between documentary and fiction. His cinema repeatedly questions notions of truth, identity and social justice, relying on narrative devices that are often hybrid. From Rechercher Victor Pellerin (2006), he affirms a taste for questioning the real, which extends both in intimate fictions (Les signes vitaux, Les loups) and documentaries anchored in the present (Le profil Amina). With Antigone (2019), it reaches international recognition by proposing a contemporary and political reliving of the tragedy of Sophocles. More recently, Bergers -Hasta la montaña- (2024) continues this exploration of reality through the story of a radical life change, filmed with sensitive attention to gestures, landscapes and the relationship with the world of work. His work is distinguished by a sober and incarnate staging, attentive to the bodies, voices and social tensions that cross the contemporary world.
After the screening, there will be a colloquium with the presence of Zuriñe Iglesias González, pastor and co-founder of the project Pastoras Nómadas, who will share her journey, marked by a life change similar to that of the protagonist of the film, will intervene together with Rodrigo Vargas, co-founder of A Regenerar.