L'Empire des montagnes
Karel Prokop
2001 - 52 min - Betacam - Couleur - France

In the midst of snow-covered mountains, huge machines slice a whole mountain to dig up several hundred tons of gold per year. Melted instantly, in a small but incredibly modern factory (a joint venture with a Canadian company), gold bars leave by night towards an unknown destination under heavy escort. With a good job and a regular wage, the men that work there hardly complain. Just like in neighbouring Republics, the people living in the valleys do not always eat their fill.
The Kirgises have to adapt to unbelievably difficult conditions, after having survived in one of the most hostile environment in the world. What drives these men, women and children to live in a long-forgotten past ?
Is it to ride their boskatchis, an ancestral polo game during which the horsemen fiercely fight for a sheep's carcass ?
Or is it because this political no man's land, too high and too far to settle either a garrison or an administration, is the only place in Central Asia where one can truly live freely today ?