Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival at Tropentag 2026 (TT26)
Theme: Celebrating Pastoralist Women – Co-Creating Spaces for More Equitable Solidarities
Tuesday 15 Sept. 2026, 18:30 – 21:30* CEST
and Wednesday 16 Sept. 2026, 19:00 – 22:00* CEST
Zentralhörsaalgebäude (ZHG) / Central Lecture Hall Building, University of Göttingen Main Campus
*hours subject to change
This year the Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival coincides with the United Nation’s International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP 2026). The grassroots initiatives that led up to the creation of the IYRP include a “Gender and Pastoralism” subgroup, which did the first round of selection of films including pastoralist women, allies and scholars from all around the world.
For the TT26, we have selected films from this collection along with new films highlighting the 2026 Global Gathering of Pastoralist Women in Kathmandu. This global gathering offered an opportunity for pastoralist women to increase visibility of their contributions to extensive livestock production while networking and building international solidarities.
This film festival was started in 2019 with the vision of creating a space in which films created by and with pastoralists could be shared to contribute towards building solidarities with pastoralists. For the first time, we will screen a film made in 1984 by film festival co-founder Ann Waters-Bayer. She is a pioneer in participative methods and bottom-up innovation practices in agricultural research and development and has been an active ally to pastoralists for nearly a half century. Also for the first time, we will screen an in-progress film Jireen – Sharing Land, through which the filmmakers explain what steps they are taking to decolonise the filmmaking process together with an agropastoral community. Despite the many decades separating the making of these films, they both share a dedication to inclusive process.
Each evening of the film festival includes films that celebrate women pastoralists. For example, Tuesday includes a film introducing pastoralist women leaders in their communities in Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Spain. There are a number of short films that were collaboratively created by women pastoralists across the world together with filmmakers and academics as part of the preparation for the Kathmandu Global Gathering and reflection afterwards. These films create a stage from which an individual pastoralist woman can put forward the points that are most important to her. Country-specific networking and mutual solidarity between women pastoralists can be seen in films on both nights of the film festival, on Tuesday with the Hungarian Pastoralist Women’s Group and on Wednesday with Ganaderas en Red from Spain.
Each evening of the film festival also includes films made by women filmmakers that demonstrate why livestock mobility is important. These films show how it can be a sustainable strategy for producing livestock in environments with variable availability of vegetation over space and time. Too often, herding, ranching and other forms of pastoralism more generally are viewed as a male endeavour. The women featured in these films flip the narrative and make their work visible.
The Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival (www.pastoralistfilmfestival.com) is organised on behalf of the Coalition of European Lobbies for Eastern African Pastoralism (CELEP) by DITSL (German Institute for Tropical & Subtropical Agriculture), Agrecol Association for AgriCulture & Ecology and Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (VSF) Belgium. The 2026 program has been finalized by Keerthana Sri and Margareta Lelea.
Programme
Tuesday, 15 September, 18:30 – 21:30*
Part 1 18:30 – 19:10
Films and Discussion
Opening of the 5th Edition Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival with Echi Gabbert and Ginno Ballo who will present content from their in-progress film about agro-pastoralism in Ethiopia.
This meeting shares the ongoing journey of collaborative filmmaking and project development in the agro-pastoral Arbore community in southern Ethiopia. It also explores what it means to protect community ownership.
The initiative Jireen – Sharing Land, a community-led film project, by Echi Gabbert and Ginno Ballo will be showed in part.
When Ethiopian co-creators were denied Schengen visas, completing the film in Europe would have been the easiest solution but it would also have reproduced the very hierarchies the collaboration sought to overcome. Instead, the team chose to preserve shared authorship and develop new forms of co-creation, allowing creative decisions to remain with the community. We will watch some of the footage in progress.
Our experience invites broader reflection: Decolonial collaboration is about language and participation and it is also about redesigning processes when existing structures undermine equity.
Participants are invited to discuss how filmmaking and international cooperation can move beyond damage-centred approaches toward collaborations that recognize pastoralist communities as experts on land, animals, health, culture, and their temporalities.
Part 2 19:20 – 21:30*
Films and Discussion
| Pastoral development and gender |
3:27 |
United Kingdom |
Saverio Krätli (IIED) |
2023 |
| Transhumance: the seasonal droving of livestock |
21:20 |
Albania, Andorra, Austria, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain |
Francesca Passetti (UNESCO) |
2023 |
| Living in the mountains of Ladakh, India |
3:05 |
India |
Patrick Augenstein (Institute of Geography, Univ. of Bonn) |
2023 |
| Enchukunoto (The return) |
15:52 |
Kenya |
Laissa Malih (Reciprocity Project) |
2024 |
| Pastoralist Series 4: Sadia Ahmed |
2:08 |
Somalia |
VSF Belgium & CELEP |
2019 |
| Maira (Colombia) Political representation of pastoralist women, care and labour |
2:07 |
Colombia |
Maira Alejandra Quintero Brito and Brittany Bunce |
2026 |
| Reversing, reviving, regenerating: pastoralist women restoring rangelands in Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, and Spain |
15:56 |
Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Spain |
Fiona Flintan (International Livestock Research Institute) |
2022 |
| Let’s woman up – Darrylin Gordon, pastoralist, Lamboo Station, Kimberley |
6:42 |
Australia |
Gisela Kaufmann & Karsten Orlt (Visible Farmer Project) |
2020 |
| Time of Hungarian women herders |
14:48 |
Hungary |
Nikolett Csányi (HVG*) |
2023 |
* Heti Világgazdaság (Weekly World Economy) – http://hvg.hu/
Wednesday, 16 September, 19:00 – 22:00*
Part 3: 19:00 – 20:50
Films and Discussion
| Film for Ann |
4:21 |
Germany, USA, Nigeria |
Lauren Svejcar and Margareta Lelea |
2026 |
| Fulani dairywoman |
19:00 |
Nigeria |
Ann Waters-Bayer and Asma’u |
1984 |
| Djoudé Issa Demo (Benin): Pastoralist women, economy, livelihoods and working conditions |
2:53 |
Benin |
Brittany Bunce and Djoudé Issa Demo |
2026 |
| Pasto raiz pasto semilla (Root pasture seed pasture) |
39:29 |
Argentina |
Mariana Quiroga Mendiola |
2023 |
| Why a Global Gathering: Hear from pastoralist women |
7:56 |
Global |
Djoudé Issa Demo, Ainhoa López, Maria Guadalupe Molina Siller, Lászlóné Sáfián, Alena Gerasimova, Fozia Noor, Dintle Maphala, Bhavana Desai, Saodata Abubacrine and Brittany Bunce |
2026 |
| Byambagerel Baatar: Visibility, recognition and rights of pastoralist women |
2:24 |
Mongolia |
Brittany Bunce |
2026 |
Part 4: 21:00 – 22:00
Film
| Mujeres de viento, tierra y ganado (Women of wind, earth & livestock) |
55:00 |
Spain |
Ganaderas en Red |
2023 |
Programme
