The Gold-Laden Sheep & the Sacred Mountain

When an old shepherd hears the news about a jet fighter that has crashed, he remembers the stories about other plane accidents that made the finders very rich. Blinded by greed, he leaves his herd in the lurch and goes looking for the wreckage. However, the accident was on a holy mountain. While the shepherd roams with his impure intentions and tries to put other treasure hunters off the scent, predators attack his sheep. His assistant takes advantage of a bottle of alcohol he had hidden, and dies in an accident. The Himalayas, which form the backdrop to this drama, are not the picture-postcard landscape familiar from nature documentaries. It’s a rough and inhospitable area. The men who work here, played by real local shepherds, know that danger is never far away. But if they disrupt the holiness of the mountain, and hence the order of things, the threat level transcends this world. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)