30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Italian premiere

For thousands of years on the high Himalayan plains of Ladakh, nomadic shepherds have followed the itineraries of seasonal migrations in search of grazing land for their sheep. At 4.500 metres above sea level, in an extremely evocative landscape with gelid winds blowing across the valleys with weak sunlight and thin air, long processions of men and their flocks plod through the frozen wastelands and meadows with little grass and rocky ridges. For Tundup and his family, this may be the last transhumance, the end of the nomadic life on the high plains of the Ladakh. When the animal dealers arrive at the end of this migration, he will have to decide whether to sell his flocks, abandon his land, and move down to the valley, as many have done before him, or stay up there, in Karnak. Living for many months with these people and sharing their daily life, Marianne Chaud captured stories and images of rare intimacy. The magnificent landscapes con- trast markedly with the rough existence of the nomads, with whom the director shares emotions and fear in the face of such an uncertain future. 

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  Marianne Chaud

  Born in 1976 in Briançon in the Hautes-Alpes, Marianne Chaud is an ethnologist who graduated from the EHESS and dedicated her doctoral thesis to the Ladakh region of the Himalayas. For twelve years she lived between France and the remote Himalayan valleys of northern India. Her work as a filmmaker began in these very valleys in 2009, with a technique reduced to the essentials: a camera, a microphone, no crew. She returned to her place of origin, in the Briançon area, precisely during the first arrivals of migrants on foot through the snowy passes between France and Italy. L'aventure tells of her encounter with some of their stories.