‘Snow Leopard Sisters’ review: Indigenous conservationists fight for change in the high Himalayas

Dirs: Sonam Choekyi Lama, Ben Ayers, Andrew Lynch. UK. 2025. 96mins

The spectacular-looking Snow Leopard Sisters deftly illuminates world considerations via private tales. Charting the friendship between two indigenous ladies within the excessive Himalayas, it conveys a vivid sense of the tensions between custom and modernity relating to conservation points, life-style selections and communities making an attempt to flee the lengthy shadow of patriarchy. Severe-minded however brimming with visible and human curiosity enchantment, it may observe within the footsteps of Himalayas-set Sundance 2024 documentary Agent Of Happiness (2024) in attracting the eye of festivals, documentary channels and specialist distributors.

Brimming with visible and human curiosity enchantment

Documentary’s skill to put the viewer within the coronary heart of unseen worlds is vividly illustrated as conservationist Tshiring Lhamu Lama travels alone via the mountains round her hometown of Dolpo in northern Nepal. Surrounded by lofty, snow-covered peaks, she fastidiously navigates a slim ridge in what appears to be like like a path to Shangri-la. The majesty of the setting is in stark distinction to the hazards that lie throughout. Tshiring has been a leopard conservationist for the previous 10 years, a interval wherein their numbers have continued to say no. Now, she checks hid cameras to see what they may have recorded. Tshiring recollects that, “ The primary time I noticed a snow leopard I fell in love”. The footage she uncovers underlines the grace and great thing about the creatures.

Native herders are much less enamoured of the snow leopards that prey on their animals. Cellphone footage exhibits the night time one household in Dolpo misplaced 45 goats to an assault. On the similar time that Tshiring is attempt to shield the snow leopard inhabitants, some locals are intent on torturing, beating and killing the animals. In Dolpo, we’re additionally launched to Tenzin Bhuti Gurung, a soulful teenager whose life has reached a crossroads. Her sister has died and her father is in jail. She has been taken out of college to have a tendency the household herd. There’s a rising stress for her to marry as it’s thought-about “unacceptable to not have a person in the home”. Tenzin secures one concession from her household – an organized marriage is positioned on maintain till she has accomplished a quick apprenticeship with Tshiring.

Over two weeks, the ladies work collectively, bonding and discovering frequent floor. Tshiring turns into mentor and position mannequin, exhibiting {the teenager} that it’s attainable to stay as an unbiased girl. She additionally converts Tenzin to her love of the snow leopards and perception within the want for sensible options to sustaining the security of native herds. Concord requires that there’s room for everybody.

Snow Leopard Sisters has a fearless, indomitable central determine in Tshiring, who treks via the mountain move to Dolpo carrying her toddler son Sontse on her again. Her dedication to conservation is unwavering and touching as she declares, ”If I can save only one snow leopard, it’s price it.” Tenzin additionally proves a posh character with simply sufficient spine to withstand the stress she is underneath. All through her apprenticeship, she grows in confidence.

The connection between the 2 ladies is on the coronary heart of the documentary, however administrators Sonam Choekyi Lama (a Dolpo native), Nepal-based journalist Ben Ayers and London-based filmmaker Andrew Lynch place that inside the context of the broader communities round them, and the affect of non secular figures, elders and herders. The result’s a profitable combination of awe-inspiring pure magnificence and perception right into a technology of ladies advancing the reason for change.