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They went over that pass.
See over there?
They went that way.
It's getting late.
And dark. I don't see them coming back.
True.
It was the same last year.
There was a pack of 8 wolves at the summit.
He went to photograph them.
At nightfall.
I saw him up there.
The wolves were following him.
I thought they'd gobble him up,
but after one night with them, he came back.
- Really? - I've no idea what they're doing.
- Hopefully, they won't be too long. - Worries me too.
Pantholops hodgsonii.
The Tibetan antelope.
Jeez!
- Sylvain, look at them run. - Fantastic!
- Immense! - The three of them.
- See the cloud of dust. Magnificent! - Clouds of dust!
One slammed on the brakes, the others kept going.
Barely out of breath, after a sprint at 5,000 meters.
It's impressive. The speed of them!
I'd met him one Easter,
after a screening of his film about the Ethiopian wolf.
Our friendship grew out of my admiration
for the artist.
He talked to me about life as a wildlife photographer
and explained the technique of the blind.
It was a fragile and refined art
that involves adopting camouflage to wait for an animal
that is never guaranteed to come.
He invited me to go with him to Tibet
to pursue a being I thought had disappeared…
The snow leopard.
For me, a dream.
For him, a rendezvous.
Then we walk, we walk, we walk…
Know what? There could be fabulous.
We walk, we walk…
Right? To pitch camp.
- I see grass and think animals. - There's a pass there.
- Let's see. - It's a climb.
It climbs, then there's a pass.
Right. A nice hike maybe.
Here could be good…
- There are animals? - Yeah, judging by the grassy spots.
So let's take a look over there.
Maybe more aesthetic.
There's nothing… Nothing in the way.
Trouble is, it's high up.
Yup, that's high.
Careful, not too loud on the climb.
- With your poles. - Sorry, yeah.
Don't push too hard.
What was my comrade looking for?
Rummaging among the rocks with his binoculars.
So not everything was created for the human eye?
Munier had made the blind both his aesthetic and philosophy.
He had waited for the appearance of arctic wolves on Ellesmere,
snowy owls in the Arctic, and reindeer in Siberia.
He stationed himself in the snow, day and night,
keeping faith in his principle.
Scorn pain,
ignore time,
and never doubt
you'll get what you desire.
Let's stop here. You'll see, the view's something else.
Then we crawl forward?
Yeah, I'll put my pack down,
then we'll crawl forward for a look.
The sun's warm.
Like there's nothing but silence, but there are lots of things that…
Hopes fulfilled or not…
The leopard's the grail but there are many other species.
We really need to find a spot to sleep.
Here, to experience it all.
So we don't waste time climbing.
We need to be where it's at to get dusk, to get dawn.
I could stay here for hours.
Hours and hours.
What I like is all these different planes.
As a spot for a blind, it's ideal.
And for leopards.
With some relief and flat stretches of pasture for…
- Bharals. - Herbivores.
So, relief with crags.
And plateaux.
Exactly. Alternating between…
Between prairies and rocky outcrops.
Those little canyons, there…
Perfect for them.
So beautiful!
Full-on punctuation. It's a line of writing, look.
As soon as we move, we're spotted by the bharals.
Unbelievable!
So imagine a leopard…
Yeah.
It's going to be super complicated.
But being here, all we saw this morning,
everything slowly waking up after a cold night…
It's magic.
When you go back to France,
and you begin to reconnect with the news,
with the whole puppet show of humanity,
you must find it both absurd…
and horrifying.
For sure, going home is sometimes complicated.
But I know now, after 20 years or so.
Places like this are a breath of fresh air.
A way of escaping, I guess.
You're going to see nature that…
That hasn't been upended or…
That humans haven't yet got their claws into.
Around my house, it's amazing, in just 20 years,
there's been zero respect for life.
Not for a tree, a majestic oak, or the hedges in a field…
I've seen everything deteriorate, and that's…
It's visceral, it's weird,
when you grew up in that environment, as a kid,
building blinds, being there, feeling powerful emotions…
It made me who I am.
And when you see that world…
going to…
How can I put it?
Not going to pot. What's the word?
Fall into decay?
Falling into decay.
Then, on the inside, it really hurts.
I need Kamchatka, the Far North, with barely any human presence,
or only nomads, like here,
who live in harmony.
That's the word for it.
Which we have lost.
That's a feel-good landscape, right?
Yes, I don't see how an artist, a painter, let's say,
might not be touched by these forms,
by the beauty of the animals.
The perfectly integrated beauty of animals in the landscape.
I'm sometimes criticized
for setting out to photograph
all the pretty stuff and skipping anything ugly.
Fair enough, my approach isn't photojournalism,
showing the flaws in nature.
It's a real choice.
Delve into despair.
Or celebrate
beauty.
That morning, Munier wanted to show me the wild yaks.
He revered those beasts,
talking about them in his distinctive murmur.
See? They're all headed east.
Let's try to get closer.
The difficulty in getting close is unbelievable.
Especially when there's so many of them.
They pick up your scent, they see you.
It's not easy, finding hiding places in the rocks and relief.
And as soon as a female sees you, they all take off.
Conversely, a lone male can be a bit dangerous.
Especially in the rutting season, which explains those loud…
Really deep.
They're territorial at this time of year.
They can charge.
They were totems,
sent down through the ages.
They were heavy,
powerful,
silent,
immobile.
So very unmodern.
They were vessels of suspended time.
Prehistory wept
and each tear was a yak.
Hear the yaks?
That rocky area up there.
That's good terrain for the leopard. We should go.
Go take a look.
Leopard.
The name had the ring of regalia.
Nothing promised an encounter with one.
The blind is a gamble.
Go toward the animals.
Risk failure.
Some people take no umbrage but rather pleasure in waiting.
Alas, I am not one of those.
I was keen to see the animal.
Even if, out of politeness,
I did not confess my impatience to Munier.
Front paw, front paw, back paw, back paw.
Jeepers, they're magnificent. Practically…
Practically fossilized.
Could be really old prints, given it never rains.
What fascinates me about you
is the in-depth knowledge you have
of all these forms of life.
And your interest in them.
Your passion.
It gives me pause when I see you
in action amid these natural obstacles,
detecting each movement, taking an interest in each bird,
checking each animal track,
reveling in each encounter.
Witnessing all that
brings me back to the unbelievable indifference
with which I journeyed through landscapes for years,
without realizing they were so inhabited.
We are so indifferent to the world around us.
Hardly aware of it.
Hours of vigil were the antithesis of my globetrotting carnival.
Until now, I foraged for passions at random
and lived the hasty lifestyle.
Always on my travels,
I jumped off planes
and onto trains,
yammering in one talk after another
that humans should invest in being less agitated.
Around 4 a.m., we start crossing…
Yes, superbly backlit by the sun, facing due west.
The wind's looking good.
Just imagine…
It could be absolutely anywhere.
If you're not committed,
sweeping with the telescope in a disciplined manner…
Each rock…
The hidden part of the world.
Yes, exactly.
For sure, sometimes, like yesterday or the day before…
It's not very encouraging.
You need a good inner life, though.
Working a blind on your own.
A blind like this over two days
is fantastic for meditating and thinking.
But is it like insomnia, you wind up hatching dark thoughts?
You know, at night.
No.
Motionless, alone, peering at rocks.
Surely your noggin ends up in overdrive, no?
Truly not.
It's nuts.
That's good. So you feel like you're where you should be.
Yes, completely.
As soon as I'm in a city,
I'm a different man.
As if I'm playing a role.
In nature, on the other hand,
it's just you. You can't cheat.
It's definitely a reality. I block out all that.
All the commotion people make.
Well, that little cloud gave us…
a frosting on the landscape. Cool.
Looks like it's lifting now.
Get my nose back in the scope.
Isn't it cool here?
Gonna put my heated socks on.
Feet are always the big issue in a blind.
We peered at landscapes
with no certainty of them yielding fruit.
We waited for a shadow in silence,
facing the void.
It was the opposite of a selling proposition.
The right-here-right-now of modern epilepsy
ran into the most-likely-nothing-ever of the blind.
Turn your head a touch to the right,
and you'll see a little accentor, on the yellow lichen.
All right, it's gone.
And look!
A saker falcon on its spike.
The art of camouflage.
I've been known to photograph it without realizing.
- As in? - One time, a leopard…
I spot it early morning.
It disappears into a sort of rocky corrie.
It can't escape me, it's there.
Then nothing. I wait for hours, until nightfall.
Nothing doing.
And a falcon comes along, perches on a rocky spur…
I'm using a big zoom, an 800 mm,
so I pivot slowly to get the shot
and I go back to camp.
Two, three months later,
looking through my images,
on the computer screen, I bring up the falcon…
and I got a shock.
Along the contour of the rock, behind it…
The leopard's head. It was there, watching me.
- Without your knowing? - Without my knowing.
Just being here with it, among these crags
and labyrinths,
knowing it's there, on the prowl or at rest,
that alone is a marvelous moment.
Your Thermos is filled up, Sylvain?
It's just thrilling.
Something I realized in the last few days,
I traveled all over these places without seeing a thing.
Not a thing! Now I think, I'm 45 years old,
and so many animals saw me!
For sure. When I see all your…
- We get spotted a lot. - Yeah, that's for sure.
Without our knowing. Unbelievable!
It's learning to read a landscape differently.
Big Brother is watching you.
Except it's the animals.
Yup, the animals…
Everywhere, all the time!
What annoys me is, we're so not animal anymore.
There's a disconnect.
We're nature's numbskulls.
Up here, for us, it's a struggle.
At 5,000 meters, we're bumblers.
We have no sense of observation, no sense of smell. All our senses…
They've fallen into disuse.
I dream of being invisible.
We try to camouflage but we're no good at it.
Being invisible?
I've traveled a lot, I was spotted,
and I had no clue.
I had no clue.
I've traveled a lot, I was watched, and I had no clue.
That was my new psalm,
which I mumbled Tibetan-style,
droning away.
It summed up my life.
From now on, I'd know we meander
before open eyes, in invisible faces.
A Pallas's cat,
otocolobus manul,
pops up on a rocky spike with its hirsute head,
syringe-canines,
and yellow eyes,
rectifying with a demonic glint its plushy cuddliness.
Don't try to pet me or I'll leap at your throat,
said its grimace.
Munier enabled me to raise the veil
to contemplate the wanderings of the princes of the Earth.
I compensated for my former indifference
by the twin exercise of attention and patience.
Let's call it love.
Fox!
Tibetan fox!
On a pika burrow.
There!
Got one!
Impressive.
Encountering an animal is rejuvenation.
The eye captures a glimmer.
The animal is a key.
It opens a door.
On the other side…
The incommunicable.
In his life,
Munier had always wanted to take a look
on the other side.
We aimed for the summit,
dominating the plateau at over 5,000 meters.
There's always the hope that, on the other side,
lies a whole new swath of freedom.
A homeland for the leopards.
Heck of a view!
- Sorry? - It's a heck of a view.
Well worth it.
If we looked hard enough, areas of shadow emerged.
Just open the right doors.
In other words, find the right passes.
And on the other side,
it was a land of valleys and crests,
whose human presence
amounted to a few nomads,
pursued by the wind.
A few bharals up there.
Look how steep it is. The leopard can't go left or right.
This is the only route, a kind of…
A bottleneck.
Fabulous! If it comes by, this is wonderful.
I set video to one minute. If it comes from afar, we'll get
the full approach.
Conversely, if it comes this way, we'll get its pretty tail
and watch it all the way out.
Maybe two minutes.
Let's leave it at one.
Then, who knows,
maybe it comes by once a week.
We're in for a surprise.
That's a bear.
You can see it went down the valley to eat barley or wheat
near the village.
That's a bear, that size. No doubt about it.
Over there, same deal.
Bear!
You can see it's polished here.
By the animals.
There's hair and fur.
The animal was clearly concerned about home comforts.
It pulled off moss.
The moss from that wall.
To line its bed.
Hollowed out like this, could be…
it's been a bear shelter for years.
Hundreds of years even.
- So that means it sleeps here? - Look up there.
The whole palm of the plantigrade.
Then it curled up here.
It seems really fresh.
First time
I see bear tracks in Tibet.
They're so discreet, I never saw any.
The first reading of the world!
That's the world's oldest profession.
Reading tracks.
It goes way back.
In fact, you're not very evolved, in human terms.
- Exactly. - The earliest stages.
And proud of it.
The cave bear! Look at this…
It's a dream of mine to see
the silhouette of a bear like that.
And there…
Looks like fox droppings.
A Tibetan fox.
- It's deep. - And well-used, see?
It's completely polished.
Check this out back here.
It's much damper, so it marks better.
Look, there!
See that?
Yes.
- Leopard… - Leopard!
And there, and there!
Leopard!
It went as far as it could go into the cave.
With another, you'd get two angles.
Exactly, so…
Sometimes I set two.
They're not super reliable.
A great big nothing.
Nothing.
Surprising I didn't get any clips
when we passed by after setting the trap.
Waiting was a prayer.
An animal came.
An apparition.
Hoping had not been in vain.
But if nothing came, we just hadn't looked properly.
The blind was a modus operandi.
Back home, I should make it a way of life.
A crow.
Yes, ravens.
They often follow predators
to feed off remains of their prey.
A good sign for our panther.
This is the best time.
When they move.
All that hollering in the canyon, I suspect it's there.
- Aligot, right? - Dunno. It says…
- Aligot. - With chunks of porcini.
I think they've spotted us.
Hello!
Hey, Gompa.
We're here for the leopard, not you.
Tough climb?
This is what I call inconspicuous.
The leopard's over there!
There? Look for it, look for the leopard.
Let's do a drawing as a souvenir.
Meantime, the leopard is watching us.
- He found it? - Yeah, he found my playlist.
Unbelievable.
That's him.
And him.
That's her.
Franco-Tibetan summit
Mekong Valley, Feb 17, 2018
What time do you call this?
You go wandering off in the mountains and…
come home at all hours!
Be serious!
And it's all about snow leopards?
One big excuse!
That?
The cat. I don't know the word for it.
And you?
What's "dia"? Ah, eight!
Eight years old.
I'm asking what he's studying.
As he's a little "bonze"…
I suppose it's "nan"…
All right.
Now, how many yaks do they have on the farm?
That's going to be tricky.
Now then…
No!
Not "teeth"! A "male yak"!
This textbook is useless!
So…
There must be a replay function.
I got an animal at night, but it triggered late.
Who is it? A bharal?
I don't know.
We'll keep going, I'll show you later…
Look, what's that?
A fox!
In these temperatures, it's unreliable.
That's a Tibetan fox.
And another. Goodness!
Tibetan fox, on what date?
- It's written really small. - Last night?
Yes, last night.
But there's still…
Fuck, look!
A leopard, comrade!
Fantastic!
The leopard in the middle stops right in front. Magnificent!
- Look, it's yawning. - Yawning!
There it is!
Unbelievable!
Let's run it again.
- Right in the middle. - It stops.
Stops bang in front!
- It has no idea. - No, doesn't see a thing.
A quick yawn.
Unbelievable!
Weirdly, it comes from the right.
I was expecting head-on.
So, from over there?
Yes, over there.
In broad daylight!
We'll come back in a few days.
I think it's worth trying a few blinds here.
That gives it a touch of the divine.
It consecrates everything. It all becomes way more beautiful,
unless it's my imagination distorting things.
See what I mean?
It enhances the value of everything.
It's unbelievable.
What we need to do is make sure…
we cannot be seen.
Set up a blind and stay put.
The thing is to see…
To turn the tables, to see before being seen.
So the high-up strategy is the right one?
I think so.
Here's great for observing them from afar.
To see them in movement, their behaviors,
we need to be higher up.
I'm sure of it.
I like to sweep along the ridges.
Sometimes you glimpse a silhouette.
That would be wonderful.
To get it outlined on a ridge.
It's possible, very possible.
This is when they come out to hunt.
There's a whole herd of bharals coming down, whistling and warning.
What do you call warning?
They warn of a danger and regroup.
Jeez, you're kidding me! Sylvain!
It's a bear!
There's a bear on the ridge!
Fabulous!
They're near the ridge.
They're playing.
Shoot, the wrong side.
Wanna go see?
It's tricky
but let's try.
Yeah, let's try. It's tricky, we'll go slow.
- Tricky because? - We'll run straight into them.
Run into them, right.
It's a mother with two cubs.
Could be dangerous.
Up there, Sylvain! The silhouettes!
Magnificent!
They're coming our way, for sure.
Maybe not.
Them coming our way is less problematic.
- Not dangerous? - No.
Rubbing on the rock.
Watch, it'll go up on its hind legs.
As in, not happy?
No, it just feels good.
They love it.
- Don't move. - I'm not moving.
They've seen us, for sure.
They're taking a good look.
- Maybe we should beat it. - No, not a chance!
Where'd they go?
- They're coming down. - Yes, most likely.
At some point, shouldn't we go?
Where's the third one?
Let's go!
Seeing a wild beast
amounted to pressing your eye to a magic peephole.
It was a view of a world that we could study, photograph,
describe,
understand perhaps,
destroy certainly,
but with which we were prohibited from communicating
since destiny had expelled us from that golden age,
when beasts, humans and gods
conducted a common conversation.
We're here, Sylvain!
Can I come in?
Of course.
Hello.
Hello!
Come and sit down.
- We need a translator. - There, maybe?
Thanks.
Sylvain!
For weeks we'd been there, sweeping those ridges.
My beautiful journey, alas, was nearing its end.
I could see myself
accepting the fact that the leopard had escaped us.
Fatalistically,
I'd have forced myself to cheer its absence
and to convince myself that my dream was better intact.
One being obsesses you,
the world takes its shape.
No, it's deep.
It's wonderful.
There's even a crown.
From a bharal.
Wonderful!
A fine male.
This little mound hid the full depth of it,
but it turns out…
Look!
- Look, it's… - We have a pair.
Stick it in.
A horn.
And Tibet out of the opening.
Fabulous!
We get a view of the valley from there?
I think we will.
How did we miss that?
- Crazy! - Completely nuts.
You think scavengers have seen it?
I don't think so. It looks really fresh.
I think we can pitch camp.
Pitch camp, prep the gear.
No, you keep looking. I'll shift the rocks.
On the way up, we disturbed it gutting the prey.
There's fur everywhere.
It saw us coming through. It's there, observing us.
There's blood on the snow. Last snowfall was two hours ago.
It grabbed the prey, hauled it by the neck into the valley
and started gutting it.
A lot of hermits come here on retreats,
in the caves. So said the nomads.
There was a great Tibetan hermit named Milarepa,
who spent goodness knows how many years
in a cave, eating nettles, until he turned green.
Due to the nettles. They worship him here.
Milarepa.
I think more animal.
- Yes, I saw you sniff… - The rock.
… the walls when we arrived,
it's one approach.
But if you're invited to someone's
in Paris…
Just don't.
No sniffing the rooms.
And its paws?
How wide?
Wider than that?
On some photos, on the move…
In mid-air, the paws look to be the same size as its head.
Just imagine.
We talked about life in the caves,
about fear vanquished by fire,
about conversation born of flames,
about dreams becoming art,
about wolves becoming dogs,
and about human audacity in crossing the line.
Then we slipped into our sleeping bags.
If the leopard came in the night,
it would sniff our scent despite the cold.
We had to accept the depressing idea…
The Earth reeks of humans.
It's blowing up there, really blowing.
I think I've got it, Sylvain.
There's something on the ridge.
- It moved? - It will. It's up.
I've got it. See that big block?
The big block?
To the right of the big block.
On the ridge, outlined against the sky.
Sylvain, look…
Look at me.
You see the biggest boulder? The darkest?
Kind of reddish?
Kind of reddish. Then go to the right.
On the ridge.
Got it?
Magnificent!
- See it now? - Yes…
Fabulous!
Absolutely marvelous.
It really is nuts.
I've never seen this before. It's super rare.
It knows we slept in the cave. I'm sure it knows.
It took its time overnight…
It doesn't look…
It doesn't look at all bothered about us.
It makes a kill
100 meters from the cave we pick to sleep in. That's…
It's a gift, a gift out of nowhere.
It could have been anywhere.
Jeez, what a stroke of luck!
Your heart skips a beat.
It's everything we've renounced.
Liberty,
autonomy,
perfect knowledge of the environment.
I'd encountered the fine features of the spirit of the rocks.
Its image
slipped under my eyelids
and lived within me.
Closing my eyes,
I saw its haughty feline face,
its features tapering into a delicate, terrible muzzle.
I'd seen the snow leopard.
I'd stolen fire
and I carried within me the embers.
I'd learned that patience was a supreme virtue.
The most elegant and most neglected.
It helped you love the world.
On the pages of my notebooks,
I compiled the principles inspired in me by these days
spent rubbing shoulders with beauty.
Revere what is in front of us.
Hope for nothing.
Delight in what crops up.
Have faith in poetry.
Be content with the world.
Fight for it to remain.
This film was shot with a small crew, with free and wild animals
and the constant concern not to disturb them.
Tribute to the animals and to those who devote their lives to protect them.