Kang Rinpoche

There’s never been a road movie quite like PATHS OF THE SOUL, an extraordinary chronicle of ordinary Tibetan citizens undertaking a 1,200-mile pilgrimage to Lhasa. Simplicity is the key to every aspect of the movie. Keeping his camera at a distance and rarely indulging in closeups, Zhang gently shows how Buddhist beliefs and practices are woven into every facet of life in a remote village in Mangkang County, part of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. (Richard Kuipers)

“This film by shooting the paths and the journey of this pilgrimage tries to look for the energy given by beliefs. It also allows us, non-believers, to think about our own spiritual lives. It remembers us to never loose ourselves. And on the road we started to look for ourselves, for our convictions. We shot this film at 4,000 meters altitude and above. We were eating and sleeping on the road. We worked literally on the road. We had to live within extreme conditions, and these for us were more complicated than actually doing the film. Because this became our lives. At the same time this film allowed me to find new cinematographic possibilities. I shot this fiction in a documentary style. There was no script. It’s a fresh start. I rediscovered cinema.” (Zhang Yang)