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

The Buddhist monastery in Phuktal is located some 4000 metres above sea level, in the Zanskar region of the Himalayas. Set into the rocks, and immersed in snow and ice for months on end, this site seems to belong to another planet. The monks live according to canons of the Middle Ages. The director of the film, Marianne Chaud, experienced this life with its rhythms, customs, prayers and silences, for the three months during which she shared the daily routines of these Buddhist monks and the young scholars who reside up there. Among them is little Kenrap, eight years old. Marianne is close to him and sits in on his philosophy lessons, accompanies him while he sings the sacred melodies, watches him play, and listens to his prayers. Kenrap is considered the reincarnation of a sixty-eight-year-old monk and although his years are actually sixty fewer, his awareness and the expression with which he looks at his world truly seem those of his predecessor. The assuredness of an adult that he brings to every day gestures and the walks through deep snow on high ridges overhanging the deep valley, contrast with the tenderness of this child who is happy to live in that world that even helps him to forget his homesickness. 

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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.