Shepherds’ Walk Inspires Documentary Film by Hyderabad Filmmaker
Hyderabad: According to Ankit Pogula, a flock of 800 sheep can camp in a farmer’s field for a night and leave enough rich manure in the soil to last almost a year. That ordinary night on the move became the entry point for him. Bheḍ ChālHis documentary about the Kuruba herders in north Karnataka. The Hyderabad-based filmmaker shot the film after years of visits, disruptions due to Covid-19 and a shortage of money. The film later won awards in Argentina and went to screenings in India and abroad, but Ankit continued walking because he saw a purpose in it.
“For me, dharma here means purpose. The purpose of water is to flow, the purpose of sheep is to graze, and the role of the shepherd is to walk together and facilitate the relationship between humans and nature,” Ankit said.
This idea of purpose shaped the film from its opening thought. Ankit said one of the lines that stuck with him was: “The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but lack of purpose.” In his opinion, shepherds did not walk simply out of habit; their movements linked sheep, land, farmer and wildlife in a working relationship not often seen in modern life.
Ankit’s parents live in Hyderabad and apart from being Telugu, he says his roots are here. His work over the years has been mainly concerned with education, environmental and social transformation. This movie started when Harsh Satya, who wrote and researched the movie, met Neelkanth Mama, one of the main characters. Pogula started visiting shepherds in 2017, started filming in 2018, and wrapped filming around 2021.
The Kuruba herders he follows are semi-nomadic families around Belagavi. About eight to ten families leave in June and return around January or February. They take 800 to 1,000 indigenous Deccani black sheep long distances, sometimes around 400 km, as the sheep cannot withstand heavy rain.
“This whole walk intrigued me,” Ankit said. “They walk in the forest during the day, camp on a farm at night. Then they move to another farm, and so on, all the way to the Deccan plateau.”
He said the film made him take a closer look at the community safety systems that still exist outside of cash-based transactions. If a shepherd loses his flock, the other families are each given a sheep so that the person can rebuild the flock. He described it as a form of social insurance.
“There are still relationship-based economies where not everything is a one-time cash transaction,” he said. “If people’s relationship with nature becomes a part of their culture, it becomes an experienced practice, not something imposed from outside.”
The film comes at a time when there is a global focus on rangelands and rural communities, with 2026 being celebrated as the United Nations International Year of Rangeland and Livestock. This context helped the film enter conversations about land, farming, animals, open commons, and the future of communities still moving with their herds. “Most people look at sheep as traffic jams. When you’re on the highway and the sheep get on the road, you want them to get off the road. We’re walking with the sheep here,” he said.
Ankit said that the most interesting part of his documentary was that he did not ask the experts to explain the shepherds to the audience, they had their own voices. The film received an award in Argentina, was shown in Germany, and entered festivals in Africa and Europe.
