梦

　　Man has shepherded his flock since the beginning of time, so long in fact that the nomadic shepherd has become part of our collective consciousness. Joan "Pipa" is the last in the line of a millenarian tradition on the verge of extinction. We accompany him on his last trek through the Catalan Pyrenees and as the days go by we discover the past and present of a man who loves his way of life and exudes the pleasure of life at one with nature. In recent years however, rural depopulation, industrialization, construction on an unparalleled scale, the proliferation of new infrastructure and climate change have combined to put an end to a dream. Where do we go from here? Is the disappearance of nomadic shepherds a sign of progress, or are we witnessing the death of our civilization?
　　From the age of ten, every spring Joan has taken his flock of sheep from the Spanish plains in Empordà to the pastures in Ripollès. This seasonal migration is a two week walk, one that Joan has made for over 60 years. Following this shepherd on the verge of retirement, El somni (A Dream) explores a tradition that is over a thousand years old, but about to disappear. Indeed, the construction of a high-speed railway is threatening to cause the gradual reduction of the sheep's grazing area. A journey into Catalonia's rural interior, the documentary is also an incursion into the memories of a man attached to the land and to nature. To make the film, director Christophe Farnarier shared the shepherd’s daily life, his knowledge and vision of the world, that are described in this moving and tender "walking movie".
　　Born in 1963 in Marseilles, Christophe Farnarier studied French literature and art history at the University of Aix en Provence and at the Sorbonne. He initially worked as a photographer and had his photographs published in Le Monde, Newsweek, The Guardian and Libération. In 1994 he won the Fotopres Award in Barcelona for his reportage on African immigration to Spain. He made his first short film in 1986, Le camion et la décapotable, followed by Love Kills, for which he received the Jury Prize at the Aix en Provence Festival. Christophe Farnarier also worked as casting director on Karim Dridi's Bye-bye (1995) and Clandestins (Stowaways, 1997) by Denis Chouinard and Nicolas Wadimoff, and as DOP for Karim Dridi's Citizen Ken Loach (1997) and Albert Serra's Honor de cavalleria (2006). El somni is his first documentary feature.