João Queiroga joined NU-Q in 2019 after completing an MFA in documentary media from Northwestern University and serving as chair of the post-production department at the New York Film Academy. His recently released short film, Shepherd Boy, received a “Docs for Sale” official selection at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. Here is the transcript of our interview concerning this new film.
How would you describe your personal inspiration behind this film?
As a filmmaker, I’m always drawn to exploring new modes of storytelling and pushing myself beyond familiar structures. My previous films tended to leverage interviews to provide the narrative structure. Digging for Life, for instance, told the story of a Cameroonian man trapped in forced labor in Angola’s diamond mines. That project was shaped around interviews and a radio-style narrative that guided the viewer through his experience. With Shepherd Boy, however, I hoped to challenge myself by stepping away from dialogue and narration, and instead tell a story entirely through image and poetic observation. I was particularly inspired by theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha’s notion of “speaking nearby” rather than “speaking about.” Rather than trying to explain or define, I hoped to create a space where the viewer could encounter meaning through presence and atmosphere. This approach led me toward an observational style that allows the cinematography to carry the emotional and narrative weight of the film. In many ways, the absence of language in Shepherd Boy opens up a deeper kind of listening.
What does this film highlight that other work has overlooked?
Films about animals are often sentimental or anthropomorphized, positioning animals either as innocent victims or loyal companions in service of human narratives. Shepherd Boy takes a different route. It is a docufictional hybrid, merging documentary observation with constructed elements to interrogate the space between reality and speculation. When I first encountered the stray who became my central character, he wore a collar. That detail stayed with me—raising questions: Was he once a pet? Was he abandoned? Had he escaped? That collar became a narrative seed, and I allowed fictional storytelling to emerge from that encounter. The beginning of the film is scripted and staged, but what follows is grounded in raw, unscripted observation. By following a dog’s instinctive, nonverbal life, the film resists spectacle and instead finds beauty in the mundane. In doing so, it creates space for empathy in places we often overlook—both literally and metaphorically.
Can you tell us more about your relationship to the subject of your film?
I spent over four years observing and filming stray animals on the outskirts of Doha. It was a deeply humbling process. Unlike human-centered documentaries, nothing could be scheduled or rehearsed. The animals came and went as they pleased, and that unpredictability became both the greatest challenge and the most beautiful part of the process. As Northwestern Professor Kyle Henry from our main campus notes, “Doc[mentary] happens when doc happens.” That statement proved especially true here. Many of the animals I filmed would disappear for weeks or months, and some never returned. But Shepherd Boy, the protagonist, kept coming back. There was a persistence to his presence, and over time, I felt that he had chosen me as much as I had chosen him. Without giving too much away, I eventually adopted him. What began as distant observation slowly transformed into a deeply personal bond. That intimacy is woven into the fabric of the film.
Besides other filmmakers, what audiences do you most hope will watch this film, and what do you hope will be their take-away message?
I hope this film speaks to those who live in the in-between, those whose lives are shaped by displacement, by silence, by invisibility. Migrant workers, dreamers, caretakers, strangers in unfamiliar lands. People who understand what it means to be looked past. Shepherd Boy asks viewers to slow down and pay attention to what’s usually ignored: to sit with discomfort, beauty, and silence. At its core, the film is about survival and care. I hope it reminds people that love and kinship can exist even in the harshest environments, and that bearing witness can itself be a form of resistance. In a world that moves quickly, Shepherd Boy invites a pause, a moment to recognize the lives that continue quietly, in the shadows.
