Eternal Snow – Films – Visions du Réel

Neiges éternelles

François Kohler
Switzerland | 2026 | 90 min
World premiere
Languages : Nepali, Tibetan, English
Subtitles : English, French

While Lhakpa completes his lengthy studies to become a Buddhist monk, his brother, Sang Bahadur, works as a porter for the international travellers who turn Everest into a tourist hub. Family issues force the youngest to come out of retirement to earn a living. In so doing, he is forced to confront the modern world in all its paradoxical complexity.

Lhapka and Sang Bahadur are brothers. But, though they live in the same mountains, they hardly ever see each other. Through their respective voice-overs, their interwoven monologues form a correspondence that reveals the extent to which life’s vicissitudes have distanced them, and how little each understands of the other’s aspirations. The elder is a porter for Everest expeditions, while the younger is a student at the Taksindu monastery. Their lives, tied to the place where they grew up, are dominated by the hikers from around the world who invade the mountains in their brightly coloured technical gear. From the 1952 archival footage that opens Eternal Snow with the first tourist expeditions, the increase in glacier tourism is striking. As the younger brother confronts this world, of which he knew nothing and to which he was unaccustomed in his monastery meditation, we witness a rapid awakening to just how vast the world is.

Raphaëlle Pireyre

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