The short documentary film Herd is available to watch at the top of the page.
At the beginning of the film, Herd, the film’s ten-year-old protagonist, lights candles and plays with the shadows she creates on the wall in her room. “Nice to meet you. I’m Naama. What’s your name?” “A rat.” “Are you a mouse?” she asks. “No, I’m a butterfly,” she answers herself.
The film’s opening signals the creator’s intention. Although it is a documentary film filmed on a farm that focuses on a herd of sheep, it is centered on the subjective experiences of the protagonist and her sensitive and complex view of the world. Despite her young age, Naama is revealed as a wise, curious child with a consolidated worldview.
When Naama assists her father on the farm, she takes on responsibilities and tasks that sometimes exceed her actual age. This is also true of her coping with death on the farm and her give-and-take with her father about the tasks he gives her and her requests from him.
A reminder that she is still a child sometimes emerges when she plays with classmates who come to visit, when her father checks if she and her friend know how to count to 80 to provide the desired amount of food to the sheep, and in moments when her childlike innocence is present.
At the heart of the film, the tension between childhood and adulthood is also reflected in the differences in the father’s and daughter’s worldviews. The father raises his daughter without unnecessary sentimentality. He teaches her to deal with the hardships of life (and death) as they are, to look at them devoid of emotion. This practical approach undoubtedly provides her with protection and ways of coping. However, it is precisely from her clean and perhaps naive contemplation, which has not yet hardened or been broken by the hardships of life, that Naama reveals compassion for the animals and a more moral view of absence. This perception allows her to imagine a different future for where she grew up and the possibility of creating real change there.
Throughout the film, the director and cinematographer, Omer Daida, observes quietly and patiently. She shows great respect for the space her camera enters and, above all, for the object of her observation, Naama. Despite the lack of dramatic events, the film allows us to feel the undercurrents beneath the surface and captures the great drama of life where death is ever-present and experienced daily, without words, as an inseparable part of life.
The film Herd was produced as part of the Bachelor’s degree program at the Sapir College of Audio and Screen Arts.
The short documentary film Herd is available to watch at the top of the page.
