EXCLUSIVE: We’re getting an unique first take a look at Sonam Choekyi, Ben Ayers and Andrew Lynch’s movie Snow Leopard Sisters, which premieres at this time on the SXSW Movie Pageant.
“For hundreds of years, our tradition has been in concord with nature,” native snow leopard conservationist Tshiring Lhamu Lama says within the clip, adopted by a shot of the magnificent creature trying to her digital camera. “Our ancestors imagine that the snow leopard is a guardian of the mountains. With no snow leopards, our sacred steadiness might be misplaced.”
The movie tells the inspiring story of an unlikely but highly effective friendship between two Indigenous girls in one of the crucial remoted corners of the Himalayas. The movie follows Lama as she mentors 17-year-old Tenzin Bhuti Gurung. Collectively, they journey by way of the treacherous but breathtaking panorama of the Himalayas searching for the final remaining endangered snow leopards.
“After I was working for the Nationwide Park, my analysis confirmed that the snow leopards have been disappearing in Dolpo,” Lamu provides. “No one appeared to care. So I went out alone. I really feel like I’m the one one who desires to save lots of them.”
By intimate verité footage and gorgeous cinematography, the movie highlights the facility of girls’s voices in conservation, shaping a greater future for themselves and the elusive snow leopards.
“We made this movie with the first aim of supporting Tshiring’s work and the communities in Dolpo, which our complete crew is deeply linked to. Her message that wildlife conservation should start with understanding individuals and communities first is highly effective and pressing, and we have been proud to doc the concrete steps that she is taking to guard the few remaining snow leopards within the wild,” administrators Choekyi, Ayers and Lynch shared in a press release. “We have been all deeply moved by the power and openness of Tshiring and Tenzin, and their willingness to share such an intimate story with us. They taught us that Indigenous girls’s voices are important for profitable wildlife conservation and a lot extra. Most significantly, we cared deeply for each other and everybody within the movie from the very begin, which, after all, modified all of our lives, too.”