A panther, a monk and a shepherd... It looks like the beginning of a fable, it's in any case the starting point of Snow Leopard the latest film by Tibetan director Pema Tseden, presented at the GIFF.
Tibetan cinema
Tibetan director who was able to disturb the Chinese giant until his arrest and confinement in 2016, Pema Tseden is mainly the tutelary figure of a whole section of the cinema in its region. If he started a « New wave » He is also the mentor of a whole new generation of filmmakers he produces and takes under his wing. Died at the beginning of the year 2023 to 53 years (apparently because of mountain sickness), he leaves us a last film, Snow Leopardpresented to the GIFF (Geneva International Film Festival).
Abbas Kiarostami, in the vicinity of which Pema Tseden would easily have been placed, line his own words in the trace left by Ozu or Bresson. For Snow Leopard, we are resolutely dealing with a cinema of reality. Turned at an altitude of more than 4000 metres in the Madoo region, there is a local television crew, a monk and a shepherd placed in front of the most famous predator in the region: the snow panther. While an individual of this species has eaten about ten sheep, the shepherd refuses to release the feline he has captured. Then he follows a mysterious comedy of manners around the fate of this poor panther...
Catalytic predator
Built in concentric circles allowing a repetition humor that will cross the entire feature film, Snow Leopard Surprises by what he manages to make emerge from his base soil: a simple discussion between a land-to-earth and stubborn shepherd, a city TV team, a monk and the Chinese authorities. Each of these characters is placed in pawns all around this panther materialized in special effects (particularly successful elsewhere), serving as a catalyst for the chain reactions they are about to experience.
Between majestic landscapes and scenes with comic pliers-without-laughs absolutely irresistible, Snow Leopard invites us in its temporal expansion and offers us in mirror the description of our own Western societies, torn on the so thorny question of the return of the great predators, with the same divisions. Better, he thus dissects his micro-community while keeping it under the voyeur lens of his camera, creating a global portrait of the poles crossing his own country. If this film confirms the loss of one of Tibet's greatest (greatest) filmmakers, it gives us the desire to fully discover the short filmography of an exciting director!
« My films focus on human stories, they target not only Tibetan audiences, I hope they can transcend regions and cultures so that more people from different nations can feel emotional resonance. »
That looks great! I'm hoping we'll have a walk out at our house.