Sweetgrass Poster

An unsentimental elegy to the American West, “Sweetgrass” follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.    

Produced by Ilisa Barbash
Recorded by Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Sound Editing and Mix / Ernst Karel
Colorist / Patrick Lindenmaier
101 min, 35mm, 2009

Independent Spirit Award, Best Documentary Nomination, 2010
Independent Spirit Award, Truer than Fiction Nomination, 2010
Der Tagesspiegel 2009 'Top' Film of Berlinale
Cinema Eye Award Nomination, 2011
New York Times, Critics' Pick 2010
Washington Post, Critics' Pick 2010
Gotham Award Nomination, 2011
New Yorker, Movies' Pick 2010
Village Voice, Film Pick 2010
"The first essential movie of this young year...
Magnificent... Wonderful... Astonishingly beautiful..."
Nature overwhelms the screen and even minds."

—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

"A one-of-a-kind experience.
At once epic-scale and earthbound"

—Ronnie Scheib, Variety

"Monumental… An anthropological work of art."
— Robert Koehler, Cinema Scope

"Awe-inspiring... Hilariously weird."
— Jim Hoberman, Village Voice

A Cinema Guild Release | © 2009 All Rights Reserved | sweetgrass@me.com.