Meeting with Vincent Munier and Marie Amiguet, co-directors of the documentary “La Panthère des neiges”, showing this Wednesday. The film looks back on the meeting between Sylvain Tesson and Vincent Munier, in Tibet, on the lookout for the snow leopard.
Synopsis: In the heart of the Tibetan highlands, the photographer Vincent Munier leads the writer Sylvain Tesson in his quest for the snow leopard. He introduces him to the delicate art of hiding, reading tracks and the patience necessary to catch a glimpse of the animals. While traveling the summits inhabited by invisible presences, the two men weave a dialogue about our place among living beings and celebrate the beauty of the world.
DashFUN: How long did it take to complete this film, La Panthère des neiges?
Marie Amiguet, co-director: Vincent Munier, who is at the origin of this idea for a film, began his first images in Tibet in 2010. From 2010 to 2018, he had already accumulated six trips with a lot of animal and landscape images. But there was no story. Afterwards he contacted me to accompany him there. He proposed to Sylvain Tesson to come who said: “give me a good reason not to come!”. The four of us left. My real role was really to film their meeting, to film the meeting between literature and photography.
We made two trips to Tibet. The first in February 2018, lasting one month. There were four of us: Sylvain, Vincent, Léopold our assistant and me. We went back a year later, in 2019. It was quite a long time after that. There was a first version of the film that I edited in a very traditional way. A 1:15 version which then served as a bit of a springboard to say “ok, we’re trying to go to the movies”. So we put together a real cinema film. Not just a homecoming movie.
There have been two years of reassembly, not full time. There were 8 months of assembly alone. Then we called in a professional editor, Vincent Schmidt. The project spanned three years for me.
How did you manage to capture all these exchanges between Sylvain Tesson and Vincent Munier so that they are so spontaneous? Did you have to “cheat” a bit?
Marie Amiguet: No, not cheated at all. I hate directing. That’s why I like the documentary. It is to capture moments that are not planned.
I knew Vincent wanted to have a conversation with Sylvain, ask him questions. They chatted for an hour and a half, and so we did the same thing on another lookout. Sometimes I would throw out a question and it would start a dialogue. But there is nothing written. We are on the spot.
High and Short
There are very beautiful exchanges and a great complementarity between them …
Marie Amiguet: Vincent did not know how it could happen with Sylvain. They didn’t know each other that well, even though they had already crossed paths. We don’t know how it can go. But after two days, I was filming them and they were like two kids, like they had known each other for 10 years. It was very nice.
Immediately there was a very strong bond. I think Vincent was very happy to share what he likes to do, and Sylvain was extremely receptive. Basically, Sylvain had summoned Vincent to Tibet so that he could write him some little captions for his photo book, that was the pretext. In exchange, he made a bet to show him the snow leopard, an animal he dreams of seeing.
After a week in Tibet, Sylvain told Vincent that he was very inspired, that he would write a story. The book and the movie are really intertwined, but it’s not an adaptation of the book. It is really this same trip, from which Sylvain’s story is taken, and our film, knowing that we still did a three-week shoot the following year to complete. This is where we saw the bears, the visit of the cave with the footprints, the panther …
Vincent Munier: Sylvain and I had crossed paths in adventure festivals. We had discussed. He had told me his desire to discover a bit of the lookout.
To finish all the work I had done upstream in Tibet, I really wanted to have his lyrics, to extend that and then there was the idea for this film. I said to myself: “come on, let’s try to take her!” While using the images that I had shot before, try to mix this poetry of the savage, and then this dialogue between us.
I was a little anxious, it was not won. It went remarkably well. In the field, he was extremely discreet and patient. He had his eyes shining like a kid. Needy too. He works a lot.
I had…
