Shangri-La, Paradise Under Construction
Shangri-La, Paradise Under Construction
Mirka Duyn, Nina Spiering
Netherlands, Sweden / 2022 / 94' / International premiere
Date
05/06/2023 21:00
Place
Libera Università di Bolzano
Piazza Università, 1
Bolzano

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