The Grasslands Project - A Rancher's View
2016 · 8m · Canada
Directed by Scott Parker
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Rancher Miles Anderson works land held by his family for over a century, now bordered on three sides by Grasslands National Park. Once seen as a threat to sage grouse, his cattle are now treated as part of the conservation solution.
Picked by Margot
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The premise wants to be a paradox—conservation through cattle—but it settles into feel-good consensus instead of interrogating the actual contradiction; a missed opportunity to make something genuinely unsettling about how we reconcile land use and preservation.
Parker situates this within a lineage of land-ethics documentaries while maintaining formal restraint; the contemplative pacing and tender framing of Anderson against the landscape suggests a careful argument about stewardship that earns its eight minutes through compositional discipline.
The singular choice here is treating the rancher's perspective as the film's actual subject rather than illustrative—by committing fully to Miles's voice and visual logic, Parker avoids the usual talking-heads trap and lets the land itself become a character through accumulated, patient observation.