Producer Sally Ingleton was developing a film about an art program that assisted Tibetan refugees to overcome the trauma of leaving their homeland when she heard about an incident on the infamous 6000-metre Nangpa Pass, an ancient trade route from Tibet to Nepal. It was October 2006, a few weeks after a savage attack on unarmed Tibetan refugees by Chinese border police, which resulted in the death of a 17-year-old nun a few hundred metres from the Nepalese border.
The events were witnessed by numerous mountain climbers, one of whom had filmed the attack. Many of the refugees had managed to avoid arrest and made it safely to Kathmandu. After securing finance to develop a script, Ingleton teamed up with director Mark Gould, who had previously filmed in the Himalaya and had a strong interest in the subject. The pair set to work tracing key participants in the drama—the Tibetan refugees who survived the attack, the climbers who witnessed it, the climbing companies that operate in the region and the shadowy illegal guides who orchestrate refugee crossings.
Tibet: Muder In The Snow - Production Story
Mark Gould flew to India in August 2007 on a preliminary research trip, filming interviews with several survivors, while Sally Ingleton traced the climbers, many of whom were reluctant to speak. “I knew the key people were, Sergiu Matei who had filmed the young nun being shot and Luis Benitez, because he had such a strong story. He had emailed his story out and this had sent a huge ripple through the climbing community and had a very dramatic impact on his life.”
Both men had engaged an agent in the United States and were negotiating a possible deal with Hollywood for a feature film. They were initially uncertain about participating. But persistence eventually paid off and Mark Gould set off with cameraman Jeff Malouf in April 2008 on a five- week filming trip taking in Nepal, India, Slovakia, Romania, Denmark and the US. “Apart from being hot and hard and heavy at times, it was not a particularly difficult shoot, but there were lots of subtle cultural bridges to cross,” Gould says. “The most challenging thing was that with each interview, one had to take the person back into a safe space. Some of the interviews lasted three or four hours; we had to take them right back into the deepest, darkest recesses of their memory and have them access some pretty horrific experiences with the right sort of mindset. We wanted to know how they felt.”
The filmmakers knew that parts of the story—including the deals done with illegal guides and the escape across the inhospitable mountain pass—could be best illustrated using reenactment. Most of the scenes were filmed over several days in northern India, using a dry riverbed as a location for the rocky Tibetan terrain. Extras were chosen during a casting call at a school for Tibetan refugees. “Then we took a smaller group of them, all of whom had been part of the Nangpa group, up to the snow fields for a seven-hour trek behind Dharamsala. We went right up to above the tree line so the landscape was sufficiently rocky and snowy.”
Of particular sensitivity was the reenactment of the scene depicting the torture of Jamyang Samten by Chinese police. Gould cast three actors from the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. “My main concern was for Jamyang to tell his story in a way that didn’t traumatise him and I felt that the safest way to do that, was for him to direct the story,” Gould says. “He was very present during the filming and he was saying ‘go harder, go faster, more painful’. He was very happy with the way the actors performed it”. “There were some significant ethical concerns in some of those scenes, because you are dealing with kids who have been through very traumatic experiences. That’s why gaining their trust and building relationships is so important. I didn’t want to dig up stuff that was going to leave them in a mess.”
Both Mark Gould and Sally Ingleton hope their film will increase viewers’ awareness of the plight of Tibetan people. “Everyone has heard reports of human rights abuses in Tibet, but it doesn’t really hit home until you see a story like this and you hear from the kids and you see how innocent these kids are. The Tibetan authorities are sure that it has occurred before, but this was the first time they had witnesses,” Ingleton says. “I just hope it makes people question the behaviour of the Chinese. Surely in this day and age, there should be room for more international pressure to improve the situation for people in Tibet. Even if Tibetans were allowed to travel freely in and out of Tibet, it would be an improvement.” Mark Gould concurs. “I hope this film gives people an understanding of the complexity and of the political situation in Chinese-controlled Tibet and the absolutely desperate plight of the Tibetan people,” he says. “The shocking thing for us, is that they shot unarmed people, as they were moving away, just 300 or 400 metres from the Nepalese border. “These people were almost in sanctuary.”
It seems that since the protests in March 2008 in Lhasa, there have been even further crackdowns on the Tibet/China-Nepal border with more patrols and few Tibetans crossing.
