L'Aventure

Directed by Marianne Chaud

At an altitude of nearly 4,000 meters, Sking is one of the most isolated villages in the Himalayan region of Zanskar. In just three months, from August to October, the Zanskaris have to harvest and store all their food for the coming year. All the women-young and old alike-work nonstop, from dawn to dusk, and worry about the arrival of winter. Filmed from the point of view of a subjective camera by a young female ethnologist, Land of Women offers a sensitive and poetic immersion in the life of four generations of women during harvesting season. We share their rare intimacy and gradually grow attached to them.

Once free to farm in the most remote part of the Himalayas, today the people labor on the ambitious road to Zanskar, which will soon connect both sides of their valley. Their days are devoted to breaking rocks with sledgehammers, dynamiting sections of cliffs and smoothing piles of sand and gravel by hand. Along with impoverished laborers from India, they toil endlessly to complete this colossal project designed to modernize the region, and it comes at a huge cost. They’ve already relinquished much of their land and herds to focus on the project, and their lives are filled with uncertainty. They worry about their future when the road is finally finished, and when the world can easily access their region. There will be unexpected freedom and opportunities to live in greater comfort… but the harmonious and delicate balance they’ve achieved over generations - despite the extreme climate - will be lost.

At an altitude of 4500 meters, on the highest plateaus of Karnak in the Himalayan région of Ladakh, in a lunar setting where the sky blends with the mineral immensity, director Marianne Chaud filmed the movements of these last nomads. Immersed for months in their community, speaking their language, she placed her camera as close as possible to their voices and gestures, offering viewers encounters of a rare intimacy. As much as the splendor of the landscapes, the extreme harshness of the living conditions or the emotion shared with these nomads, it is this closeness that creates the magic of the film.