SunLive Competition

Winner of the Audience Award at Sundance 2011 (for US Documentary), about American Buck Braannaman – from his abusive childhood to his life as a successful horse whisperer.

Legendary horse trainer Buck Brannaman tours the world giving clinics on ‘starting’ colts, using a method of firm, but sensitive nonverbal instruction that one rancher admiringly calls ‘voodoo.’
Brannaman’s entire philosophy of how horses mirror the psychology and insecurities of their owners stems from the merciless brutality that he and his brother experienced in childhood, at the hands of an alcoholic father – an experience that informs his entire ‘feel’ for managing equine fear. It must be admitted: This guy’s instinctively empathic way with animals is uncanny. [Filmmaker Cindy] Meehl tracks Buck (a former child-celebrity trick roper who made numerous TV appearances after he went pro at age six) from Montana to the Carolinas as he calmly tames one unmountable wild thing after another with nothing more than a lead rope and a couple of flags, spinning stories and bracing bits of wisdom for his audiences, while matter-of-factly confiding to Meehl’s camera the gruesome facts of his youth.”

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Competition Results

Maxine Gribble

Robin Fea