The final film from the late Pema Tseden, the visionary Chinese-Tibetan director who died unexpectedly last year aged 53, Snow Leopard shares themes with his previous pictures. In the sheep-herding story Tharlo (2015), and Balloon (2019), about spirituality, politics and birth control, Tseden turned a lens on the collision between tradition and progress in Tibetan culture.
Here, we follow a film crew from a local TV station as they report on an endangered snow leopard captured by a herding family after killing nine of their sheep. The family members are at odds over the animal’s fate: the firebrand older brother wants to slaughter it; his brother, a monk and wildlife photographer, and his father argue that the leopard – traditionally regarded as the spirit of the mountains – should be spared. It’s exquisitely photographed, but with its mystical interludes and very obviously CGI wildlife, the film lacks the earthy poetry of some of Tseden’s earlier work.
In UK and Irish cinemas
