You should only keep the number of animals you have time for looking into the eyes of – each one of them, every day. Only then can you be sure they are all doing well. (Terje Nystbakk, 70 years).
The director follows her sister Rakel as she takes over the family farm; she will be the fourth generation to run the farm. With her wife Ida, she is packing up her life as a musician and heading north. Rakel is enthusiastic, but she is also aware that there is a lot she doesn’t know how to handle. Her wife Ida has never lived on a farm before and will also have to find her place in this new everyday life and in this unfamiliar work.
Rakel’s father has been a farmer for 40 years and knows the challenges that lie ahead of her: years when spring never arrives, summers with significant losses to predators, poor harvests, and sheep on the run.
Worldwide, small farms struggle to survive. All over, the topsoil is being depleted or overgrown - soil that has been cultivated for hundreds of years. The past year’s pandemic has revealed our vulnerability. Our food security is not guaranteed. Closed borders lead to limited import of both food and labour. Are we able to secure sufficient supplies of food in the future? How will we ensure that this food is cultivated in a way that provides security for future generations as well?
Woolly is a film about making important life choices, retiring when the time is right, being part of a long tradition, and it is about Sheep.
