31. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
22- 31 August 2025

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

  A French ethnologist and documentary filmmaker born in 1976, her anthropological research focuses primarily on the Ladakh-Zanskar region of the Himalayas. She specialized at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She directed Himalaya, la terre des femmes (2007) and Himalaya, le chemin du ciel (2008), both Lessinia d’Argento winners and awardees at the Trento Film Festival and the Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Montagnain Autrans. La Nuit nomade (2012) also earned recognition at the Film Festival della Lessinia.