Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival in Brussels

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.

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.

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 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 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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.