This essayistic travelogue traces the history of the image of Shangri-La, the famous imaginary paradise from the novel Lost Horizon (1933). Two decades ago Deqin, a Tibetan region in China, uncovered evidence proving that it was the original Shangri-La of legend. This is quite impossible because Shangri-La is a fiction, made up by British novelist James Hilton. Is this fairy tale what it seems to be? Her curiosity aroused, the filmmaker travels to the mountains of Tibetan-China with the intention to uncover the truth behind this evidence. But instead of getting answers, the maker gets entangled in a web of facts and fictions, truths and lies about the place and its colonial past.
Language: Dutch, English, Tibetan
Subtitles: Italian
Directors
Mirka Duyn
Dutch-Finnish filmmaker working and living in Göteborg, Sweden. She makes and produces documentary, fiction, and experimental film projects.
Nina Spiering
Director and production designer. She has worked in a wide variety of art forms such as fiction film, documentary, installations, interactive film and film for theater.
Gallery
Trento Film Map