A striking documentary about one of the rarest cats on the planet. A resounding premiere at the 74th Cannes Film Festival and a César Award for best documentary.
Tibet, 5,000 meters above sea level. Documentary photographer Vincent Munier and former geography teacher turned writer and traveler Sylvain Tesson came here to encounter wild nature and its queen, the snow leopard.
The mythologization of Tibet and «true» wild nature, which Munier and Tesson constantly discuss, is based on a division between humans and the rest of the living world. This distance between the protagonists and the space surrounding them becomes the center of the film and its main subject. The writer and the photographer give a running commentary on their feelings and thoughts about what is going on around them, analyzing the gap between them and the local people. Or, they recall the heroes of the past, who abandoned civilization in order to be at one with the world, such as the Buddhist Milarepa, who sought enlightenment in Tibet. This approach, which is rational in character, separates Munier and Tesson even further from nature. However, the meeting with the snow leopard, the long-awaited happy ending, overpowers them. They lose the power of speech and for a moment become part of the world of this animal and the nature around them. The leopard, who meets them on a snowy slope, is an ideal illustration of Timothy Morton’s idea of dark ecology. Its image as a wild, dangerous predator destroys Munier and Tesson’s romantic notions about the character of nature, which here is caught in the act of killing its victim.
This drama about a disconnection from the world and a long-awaited reunion with it has a detached, meditative rhythm. The camera of director of photography Léo-Pol Jacquot, one of four participants in the expedition, is like the view of a local inhabitant or even a non-human element of nature. He observes the world around him and is absorbed by it. This sets the viewer at odds with the main characters and opens up the possibility of an uninhibited look at the magnificent nature of Tibet.
The film will be shown in French with Russian subtitles.
The Velvet Queen
Directors Marie Amiguet, Vinvent Munier
France, 2021, 92 min.
12+