Underplayed Gems

Far Beyond the Pasturelands (2021)

Far Beyond the Pasturelands poster
Original title
Au-delà des hautes vallées
Directed by
Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis, Maude Plante-Husaruk
Genre
documentary film
Country
Canada
Runtime
1h 24m
Rating
7.0 of 10 from 2 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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The catalogue in 3D

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How it feels

The film follows villagers in rural Nepal who survive by foraging a rare fungus that grows from dead caterpillars. It shows how they are paid very little while dealers sell it for enormous sums, and how overharvesting threatens the whole system.

observationalgroundedquietly intenseeye-openingeconomicunhurriedmeditative

What happens

Far Beyond the Pasturelands (French: Au-delà des hautes vallées) is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Maude Plante-Husaruk and Maxime Lacoste-Lebuis and released in 2021. The film centres on a small rural village in Nepal, whose residents support themselves by foraging for yarsagumba, a rare but highly valuable fungus that grows out of the decomposing bodies of dead caterpillars in Nepal and Tibet. The film highlights both the economic exploitation of the villagers, who are paid just a few dollars for their harvest even though the dealer can sell it for over $18,000 per kilogram at market, and the unsustainable overharvesting that threatens to destroy the entire supply chain. The film premiered at the 2021 Montreal International Documentary Festival, before going into wider commercial release in 2022. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

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