Buck (2011)

           When Buck Brannaman was a little boy, his father beat him and his brother mercilessly. Only when a football coach discovered the welts on his back was he removed to a foster home. Amazingly, he went on to become the famous "horse whisperer" who has a gentle way with training horses. Some people think they have problem horses, says Buck, but what's often the case is that the horses have problem people. This ninety-minute documentary follows these two tracks — recovery from severe abuse and our relationship with animals. Buck lives an unconventional life, traveling from coast to coast giving training sessions for nine months of the year. But he's not a bitter man. This film was a favorite at Sundance, which is not a surprise because Robert Redford used Buck's expertise when all his Hollywood-trained horses couldn't do a scene he wanted and Buck did it in thirty minutes. Brannaman was the inspiration for the best-selling novel The Horse Whisperer (1995, 15 million copies), which was made into a movie of the same name in 1998 by Redford.