AllMovie

To mark the world's passage into the new millennium, Swiss director Erich Langjahr in 2001 embarked on a year long journey into the Alps to a make a film about his nation's shepherds. Sometimes long-winded, the documentary is a visual love affair with the changing seasons of the mountains and the weather-beaten faces of the shepherds Langjahr came to know along the way. Behind the beauty, however, he also tries to point out how the work of agrarian people has changed in the last century, and how Swiss shepherds have struggled to maintain their ancient, nature-bound traditions against a flood tide of capitalist excess. Hirtenreise ins Dritte Jahrtausend is also the end of a trilogy of films about rural living, which includes Ballade sur l'alpage and Guerre des paysans.