""Shaman" is above all the tale of an inner journey in which we find the themes Bartabas cherishes : drifting and spiritual quest. For although he claims to fear neither God nor man, Bartabas continually strives towards that unreachable star. "I'm a poet who rides horses and I must fell passionate about my work," confides Bartabas. (...) "We've lost our sense of human relationships and our contact with nature. Man is no more important than an animal, a tree, he's simply one part of a whole. That's what I tried to express in "Shaman" by showing a man who owes his survival to horse while conforming scrupulously to the rhythm of nature."(...) Casting aside the usual cinematic constraints, Bartabas used a great deal of improvisation in the movie.(...) "My film was thus enriched by a thousand minor details that I could never have imagined before filming. It was magical !""
(Bartabas, in an interview with Brigitte Baudin, Le Figaro)