Filmmaker Emelie Mahdavian was living in rural southeastern Idaho, in a cabin 20 miles from the nearest town of 500 people, when she met one of the stars of her new documentary, “Bitterbrush,” while having dinner at her neighbor’s ranch.

作为Mahdavian召回在访问圣弗兰sco in April to screen the film at this year’s SFFilm Festival, Hollyn Patterson cut quite a figure when she walked in. The 20-something itinerant range rider had been hired for four months to do the grueling and old-fashioned work of herding cattle across the remote and rugged Western mountains, a job that’s changed little in centuries. She and Colie Moline, her work partner and close friend, live “one riding job to the next,” working completely off the grid, with only the companionship of their dogs and horses.

“Hollyn走进穿着全面皮套裤,整个cowboy nine yards,” said Mahdavian, who lived in the East Bay for more than a decade before moving in 2016. “They were living in a camper van, eating beans from the can, and I thought, ‘Who are you?’ They were amazing, and meeting them planted the seed” of what would become “Bitterbrush.”

The enthralling, quietly observational film has since wowed critics and early audiences since premiering at the Telluride Film Festival in September.

Mahdavian, a former dancer who is currently working on a film about San Francisco choreographer Alonzo King, ended up following Patterson and Moline for their final summer herding cattle. Their work at high altitudes, in unpredictable weather, is punishing and filled with risk, yet the film is a portrait of two friends fully at ease — with each other, with long stretches of silence and with nature’s rhythms in the remote American West. Mahdavian shared her thoughts on “Bitterbrush” with The Chronicle ahead of the film’s limited release in select Bay Area theaters starting Friday, June 17.

Q: What brought you to rural Idaho where you were living when you met Colie and Hollyn?

A:It was a very Bay Area reason actually, which was simply that we couldn’t afford housing here.

My husband and I had initially been in Oakland, then Richmond, and had been moving slowly eastward. We built this cabin on some land that we were able to buy inexpensively. We both wanted to make our art, have a little bit more financial stability and not be in the hustle.

Q: What inspired you to make a film about Hollyn and Colie after you met them?

A:I wanted to make something with women and collaborate with women. And I was feeling very affected, changed really, by the experience and lifestyle shift of living very close to the land. I wanted to do something to explore that experience.

Q: Watching the film, we get to admire these two incredibly skilled and tough women at work, and yet you don’t overtly draw attention to how unusual they are in terms of what we expect of cowboys.

A:I really didn’t want the film to be saying, “How amazing women can do these things too!” I didn’t want to frame (the story) as, “Here are women fighting the men’s battle,” because that would put them in a certain box that they were breaking out of. I thought, let’s just take for granted that they’re great at their jobs. My neighbors would tell me, everybody wants them to ride their land. These women are experts.

Q: Were you ever nervous for their safety, like when Hollyn was riding in the blizzard that could have become a total whiteout, while pregnant?

A:Doing the work they do, they accept there’s risk and there’s always the possibility that something could happen that would end it all. And you have no control over the weather, which changes constantly in these places that are so wild.

If you ask them what they would do if one of them got hurt, since they had no way of calling for help, they’d each say they trust the other to carry them out. It speaks to the depth of their friendship.

Q: Female filmmakers like Jane Campion, Chloé Zhao and Kelly Reichardt have remade the Western in interesting ways recently. Did you want to put your own personal stamp on the genre?

A:If I’m being honest, I wasn’t thinking about the Western and its precedents because I didn’t want to get stuck in a headspace of either conforming or fighting a genre. That wouldn’t have been productive.

The questions I was asking myself were more about, how can I use the medium to give an audience a feeling of being immersed in this land and the way it transforms you? It’s vital. It affects you in every way. It’s not a backdrop.

Q: What surprised you about Colie and Hollyn as you got to know them more deeply?

A:Because it’s obvious that the work is very hard and brutal, when you meet them, you think, “Why would you do this?” The economics are terrible; it’s totally insecure and uninsured work. Everything about it says, “Don’t do this job.” And the answer has a lot to do with liking the lifestyle, the solitude and freedom in their case. They were deeply sustained by just being out on the land with animals.

But the lesson for me, from my friendship with them, was the kind of resilience they bring to life. When Colie walks into a room, it’s with a positive, loving attitude, like she always wants to transform the space she’s in for the better. The fact that it’s born out of so much brutality … I respect that so much. I think it changes me for the better to be reminded of that.

“Bitterbrush”opens on Friday, June 17, in select Bay Area theaters.