Pitched somewhere between Nicolas Philibert’s Être et Avoir and Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte, this insightful account of a year in the life of a family of north Pennines tenant farmers proved a deserved hit at the 2015 Sheffield Doc/Fest. Told with affection but without sentimentality (life and death are unflinchingly intertwined), Magali Pettier’s debut feature gets under the skin of its subjects and the tough lives they lead. While Tom and Kay Hutchinson joke about his devotion to rearing the perfect prize-winning sheep, their children reflect on the ups and downs of rural life with a wonderful blend of innocence and experience. The whole family are terrific company and Magali captures both the beauty and the bleakness of the environment in which they live and work.
