Xue bao

Sometimes we need fairy tales in order to comprehend what’s wrong in the so-called real world. This one involves a mythical snow leopard and its cub, an angry farmer who has lost nine rams to the feline predator, a television crew who travels to the mountains to shoot the conflict between man and animal as well as a monk who communicates with the creature. It’s a fairy tale but it’s set in presentday Tibet, a country that Pema Tseden cared about throughout his career, until his sudden death in May. In his final film, the director once again shows how everyday life in this remote place continues to grind against political ideas from Beijing as well as the changing values of a global world. Shot in a majestic landscape close to Lake Namtso at an altitude of almost 5000 metres, Tseden searches for a common moral conception of the animal. Is it a beast or a friend? The film mirrors this desire to grasp the animal by employing different strategies to look at it. YouTube videos, wildlife cameras, photographs, mobile phones, television cameras, binoculars, the naked eye, dreams. What we see is always distorted until everything is inverted and we understand that we are equally at the mercy of the leopard’s gaze. (Patrick Holzapfel)

Puma Tseden: THE SILENT HOLY STONES (2002), THE GRASSLAND (2004), THE WEATHERMAN’S LEGACY (2004), THE LAST HAIL SUPPRESSO (2005), SOUL SEARCHING (OR THE SEARCH) (2007), FLARES WAFTING IN 1983 (2009), OLD DOG (2011), THE SACRED ARROW (2014), THARLO (2015), MY LITTLE LAMA (2017), JINPA (2018), BALLOON (2019), CORDYCEPS (2020), ETERNAL DAY (2022), STRANGERS (2022), SEVENTEEN MILE (2023)