The Last Transhumance: Romanian filmmaker Dragoş Lumpan’s journey to bring a disappearing way of life to screen

Twenty years ago, Dragoş Lumpan began to document the age-old practice of transhumance, the seasonal movement of shepherds with their livestock between mountain and lowland pastures. He travelled for 50,000 kilometers across six countries - Romania, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Albania, and Wales - to capture in photography and film what is now a fading way of life. As his documentary The Last Transhumance reaches local cinemas, he looks back on his work to bring the project to the screen.

Filmmaker and photographer Dragoş Lumpan likens the work on the film to a personal transhumance: a series of peaks and valleys, of highs and lows. He learned along the way what the post-production of a documentary entailed. Had he known the costs involved, he might not have started it. Nonetheless, after a journey that brought him “friends, joy, and good cheese,” he says he would “do it again twenty times over if it were possible.”