Films

The story of Hajekber Serikbol, leader of a pastoralist community in the western foothills of Mongolia, which calls itself the “friendship community”, this film shows these mobile herders’ respect for the environment, living with nature and facing climate-related hazards. Communal management of pasture and water resources is portrayed as key to the sustainability of their pastoral system.

László Sáfián – born into a Hungarian family that has been herding for generations – explains how he, with his dog, manages close-herded grazing on a patchy semi-natural pasture. He speaks about the relationship between pasture and livestock, how he portions the pasture, and how he learnt and transmits this knowledge. This “slow film” documents traditional ecological knowledge of herders in their setting and at their pace, using herder–scientist dialogue about the fine-tuned decisions the herder made on this afternoon.

This film follows the Paradas, a charismatic family of Argentinian gauchos who take their goats on transhumance between the lowlands and highlands, on their arduous journey through the High Andes. It captures their reflections on the threat that “progress” poses to their livelihood, on the parents’ uncertainty whether their children will keep up the generations-old family tradition, and on the beauty of their landscape. In both spoken word and song, different family members express their feeling about their pastoral life.

From inside his yurt in northern Mongolia, the reindeer herder Bayandalai ‒ an elder of the Dukhas tribe ‒ muses about the significance of life and death in the largest forest on Earth, the Taiga. Through his connection with the reindeer and with the Taiga, Bayandalai has access to spiritual truths and higher consciousness that he may not be able to pass on to his family members before the lures of city life — jobs, money, houses, things — entice them away.

This video is part of the course material for ‘Pastoralism in Development’, a MOOC from IIED/MISEREOR and Saverio Krätli.

Find out more at:
iied.org/mooc-pastoralism-development-online-learning-journey

After several years of negotiations with the South African National Parks Board, the local Nama people were allowed to remain living and grazing their livestock in a designated nature conservation area – the Richtersveld World Heritage Site in Northern Cape Province bordering Namibia. The film documents how agreement for a community conservancy was reached and how renegotiations are being considered in view of recent changes in climate and population, including Nama not involved in the original negotiations. Researchers made this film as a way to feed back their findings to the local people.

The Karamojong are herdsmen in the North-East of Uganda and guardians of their landscape. This film illustrates how the Karamojong herdsmen make productive use of the highly variable landscape, turning even the driest plant fibers into meat and milk, whilst simultaneously dealing with frequent animal disease outbreaks and intertribal conflicts in the region.

This film was produced in collaboration with a CELEP partner, DADO (Dodoth Agro-pastoral Development Organization). It is part of a documentary series ‘Herders – Guardians of the Earth’.

In Italy’s Apennine Mountains, large carnivores are creating problems for herders. The population of wolves and wolf-dog hybrids is growing, and attacks on livestock are increasing. This has devastating economic impact on the herders, who must now confine formerly free-ranging livestock in stables and behind fences. It weakens the management of grazing land and local livestock breeds, leading to loss in biocultural diversity. The herders demand that national and regional governments in Italy take action to address these issues.

By showing how different voices coexist, intermingle, clash and overlap, this sound collage aims to make the realities and situation of pastoralists facing land-use conflict in Ethiopia more tangible.

This film tells the story of two girls in Afar, northeast Ethiopia, and how they face challenges in their young lives: Fatuma seeking to avoid the traditional arranged marriage and Asya trying to deal with livestock theft and conflict with the Somali Issa. Fatuma and Asya grow up in two different Afar nomad communities. The film depicts the reality of these adolescents, who explain their daily lives from their own perspective.

The area near Tanzania’s Mount Meru is increasingly affected by drought. The Maasai herder, Paulo, must find creative ways to feed his family. In the morning, he seeks breakfast for his goats, so that they can produce milk for their own kids – and for Paulo’s young son.

Canada’s native grasslands are disappearing at an alarming rate; they are one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. This film – the result of collaboration between conservationists and local pastoralists (ranchers) – shows how cattle grazing still creates hope on what is left of these iconic landscapes for the plant and animal species that call them home.

Urmat and Aigul are traditional pastoralists in Kyrgyzstan. Their life depends on the health of their pasturelands and livestock, but they now have to deal with climate change. This is the story of how Urmat, Aigul and their community have been fighting against the clock to restore pastureland and counteract degradation in the face of extreme climate events.

This brief animation shows how milk exports from Europe are inhibiting development of markets for milk from pastoral and other herds in West Africa. The Milk Campaign organised by SOS Faim, Oxfam, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières, European Milk Board and Mon Lait est Local shows the serious consequences of the European milk crisis for dairy producers in South and North.

This advocacy film by the Oakland Institute (USA) reveals the situation of agropastoralists in the Lower Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is home to about 200,000 people from several ethnic groups, e.g. Bode, Dassenach, Hamer, Karo, Kwegu, Mursi, Nyangatom and Suri. Most of them raise livestock where the Omo River’s annual flooding replenishes grazing areas and practise flood-retreat cropping on the floodplains. Their cattle are a source of food, wealth and pride, and are intimately tied to their cultural identity. Their lives and culture are threatened by the construction of the Gibe III Dam.

This documentary focuses on how pastoralists thrive despite climate change. As the environment becomes more unpredictable all over the world, people face higher costs in an effort to sustain the usual strategies to control it. The WoDaabe pastoralists in Niger show that there is another way.

This video on their struggles for land rights was made by six community members from five Maasai clans in northern Tanzania during a training by InsightShare in participatory video (PV). In 1992, a hunting company from the United Arab Emirates occupied 1500 sq. km of village land in Loliondo to set up a private game reserve beside the Serengeti National Park. Since then, Maasai have been denied access to vital pasture and waterpoints for their herds. The people suffered mass eviction from their villages within the disputed land. The PV training strengthened the Maasai’s own advocacy to resist landgrabbing by foreign investors.

Man-made climate change is creating conditions on our planet that are increasingly characterised by variability and unpredictability. Pastoralists use variability to their advantage. Their production systems guide us to a sustainable future. This video was created in support of the International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists (IYRP) 2026.

Subtitles in Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, German, Hindi, Italian, Spanish and Mongolian).

Also available in French, Fulfulde, Swahili and Amharic

Scenario by Saverio Krätli, Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgium, Agrecol and Misereor; funded by Misereor and the Belgian Government; produced by Cartoonbase Belgium.

The Maasai herder, Lenina, represents the plight of an entire pastoralist community in northern Tanzania. The film depicts how Mkungunero Game Reserve has been encroaching on the pastoralists’ grazing areas and how this affects their lives.

The Raika people in India have been herding camels in Rajasthan for centuries. But their traditional way of life is now under threat. A German NGO, the League for Pastoral Peoples, is trying to create a perspective for the camel herders through the sale of camel milk and other products, in order to help the Raika sustain their livelihood.

This video is part of the course material for ‘Pastoralism in Development’, a MOOC from IIED/MISEREOR and Saverio Krätli.

Find out more at:
iied.org/mooc-pastoralism-development-online-learning-journey

This documentary brings the testimonies of three herders – Fernando, Juan and Sofía – who have learnt to live close to wolves. Like many other farmers and herders in Europe, they have found ways to protect their livestock. They explain how they deal with the challenges and opportunities that come with the presence of large carnivores and how they have learnt to accept or even to appreciate them. They show that coexistence is possible, if those living close to large carnivores receive sufficient support and tools to reduce conflict.

Tsering is a shepherdess who lives with her flock in the heights of the Gya-Miru valley in Ladakh. At the age of 50, she is the youngest in her village to drive her 350 goats and sheep in transhumance in this region of the Himalayas, located 4000–6000 metres above sea level. A harsh and precarious life, often solitary, challenged by difficult climatic conditions, does not prevent this small woman from singing, laughing and philosophising.

For hundreds of years, the Dhangar nomads have kept sheep on the Deccan Plateau in Maharashtra State, India. Their biggest problem was wolves, which they also worship, knowing full well that wolves will take a few animals each year, often the weakest. Now they face a new threat: climate change, bringing extreme weather events. The film traces the path of a few migratory families and the loss they felt when several animals died during unprecedented rains. The nomads ask government to take notice of their situation and create policies to protect their sheep and their livelihoods.

This film shows the living cultural heritage of transhumance in Europe: moving livestock to different grazing grounds in a seasonal cycle that goes back as long as people have been farming in the region. In Clare County of Ireland, the filmmaker follows the Burren Beo group through their Winterage Festival celebrating this ancient tradition that allows the region’s unique plant and animal life to flourish. Here, the highlands are grazed in the winter and the lowlands in summer. This is contrasted with the movement of livestock in the north Italian Alps, that are taken to the mountain pastures for the summer.

The Tes River flows from the Bulnai Mountains through three Mongolian provinces – Khuvsgul, Zavkhan and Uvs – feeds into Lake Uvs, registered by UNESCO in 2013 as a Natural World Heritage site. On the banks of the river live mobile herder families who believe the river is God’s blessing for them, being the source of their livelihood and of water for humans and animals. The full-length film (56 min, of which this is an excerpt) shows the lifestyle of Mongolian herders, rotational grazing of rangelands and people’s attitudes to and respect for their natural environment, by depicting the lives of three families living near the top, middle and end of the Tes River Valley.

The full-film with English subtitles can be found here. The 8-min excerpt made for the IYRP 2026 can be viewed here.

This documentary shows the operation at Buckleboo Station on Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. The family keeps about 4000 Dorper sheep. Together with an ecologist, it developed a business plan and hired a water-diviner to help find water. It invested in new pipelines, telemetry systems for monitoring, and Dorper-proof fencing for rotational grazing. A perspective on pastoralism Down Under.

Transhumant nomads in Turkey spend winter on the Mediterranean coastal plains and, in spring, move with their goats into the Taurus Mountains. However, the government, the military and landowners are constantly placing new obstacles in their path. The 63-year-old woman Pervin Savran leads the nomads’ fight for their rights to continue their traditional herding system and lifestyle.

Dialogue between ecological scientist and three herders, who explain their sources of knowledge, their pasture management, the links between traditional livestock breeds and nature conservation, their interactions with conservationists, the effect of economic change on their livelihoods, future perspectives, how herders’ lives could be improved, and cooperation between herders and scientists.

Flocks are moved along the traditional livestock routes in Jaén Province, one of the last places in Spain where transhumance is still practised. The video shows the tremendous environmental, social, cultural and economic achievements of these mobile shepherds.

It is 20 years since the start of industrial mining in Karamoja. This film explores reasons why the industry is far from contributing to socioeconomic gains in this largely pastoral region, and worse, how it is shaping up massive land grabs that are undermining the livelihoods of pastoralists and other inhabitants of the area.

This video is part of the course material for ‘Pastoralism in Development’, a MOOC from IIED/MISEREOR and Saverio Krätli.

Find out more at:
iied.org/mooc-pastoralism-development-online-learning-journey

“Waynaabe” shows the life of nomadic Wodaabe livestock keepers through the eyes of the young mother Mooro. Her unmarried niece Mariama explains the worso, a ceremonial gathering of their clan in Akadaney. The film highlights how the Wodaabe value their cattle and deal with the challenges of gaining a livelihood in the drylands of Niger. It was commissioned by Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (VSF) Belgium to show the setting of their work on animal health.