Dholma

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.

Each year, groups of Tibetan children secretly flee their homeland over the Himalayas to reach schools in India founded by the government in exile. Entrusted to smugglers, they are risking their lives by illegally crossing the great Himalayan range, a towering rampart between Tibet and India. The director will take us in the Mussorie school, in North India, where two thousand four hundred children have been rescued. They have left behind their family childhood and are now considered as orphans. We will discover the itineraries of Sonam, aged nine, and Dholma, the little new girl of the school. Here in India, they are taught about Tibetan culture and will find out about the history of their country and their ancestors. Sonam and Dholma's story is that of thousands of Tibetan children. Are they orphans of a lost country or bearers of hope who will save an endangered culture?