In June 2010, thousands of shepherds from every corner of Sardinia gathered together in the Movement of Sardinian Shepherds, for a massive protest. Throughout the long summer the shepherds invaded ports, airports, roads, flooded the streets of Cagliari, occupying the headquarters of the Regional Government to demand dignity and a fair price for their primary product: milk. This film, however, is not an account of those events, but an original journey to explore the motivations of the shepherds and their everyday life, seeking to understand the origins of the protest. Heads and Tails is a story of labour, justice and dignity.

Director’s statement
Heads and Tails. A gamble that the shepherds take every time they make investments to improve their condition, whether they accept the terms of a new European policy, or decide not to comply. A game of shadows and light in which they become the protagonists of a “folkloristically authentic” image of Sardinia, but are also discriminated as rebels, the symbol of a bucolic candour and at the same time of roughness and ignorance, despite the fact that they have raised, warmed and sent to school an entire population. Light and shadow, not colour, is what we have tried to show with a meticulous process of “integration” into the social and business fabric of the agricultural and sheep-farming world of Sardinia today. An expressive and deliberately “muddy” photograph.