Film symbiosis: Embodied spectatorship and sensory (auto)ethnography in Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash's Sweetgrass.

This article analyzes the 2009 observational-ethnographic documentary *Sweetgrass* by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, focusing on its portrayal of the symbiotic relationships between humans, sheepdogs, and sheep during the final large-scale herding across Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains. Drawing on ethnographic and autoethnographic research, as well as film phenomenology—particularly Vivian Sobchak's concept of the "nonhuman stare"—the article argues that *Sweetgrass* functions as a sensory ethnography that aestheticizes non-human animals to evoke an ethical engagement with their vulnerability and the dying herding tradition. The film's observational style, absence of narration, and recurring shots of animals staring at the camera create a reflexive experience that positions the spectator in a symbiotic relationship with the on-screen animals, emphasizing care, loss, and ecological change. This approach situates *Sweetgrass* as both a documentary record and an immersive sensory experience that challenges conventional subject–object distinctions between humans and animals in film.