Kekexili: Mountain Patrol

China / Hongkong 2004, 95 min, English subtitles

A story of a life-or-death struggle at an altitude of 5,000 metres on the Tibetan Qingzang plateau. Ga Yu, a journalist from Beijing, arrives in the camp of the Kekexili mountain patrol to investigate the background to the terrible slaughter of a large number of Tibetan antelopes. In his search to uncover the truth, he sets off with a patrol into an uninhabited region covering some 40,000 square kilometres. All traces of human beings disappear quickly here. The poachers are like phantoms: able to hide in every cave, in every rock face and on every plateau. They now begin, like invisible shadows, to pursue the patrol, waiting for the right moment to execute them. The hunters are now the hunted …

Phantom Heroes

Once national heroes, they are now remnants from the past, as the country moves along the path to becoming a ‘controlled democracy’. They are the working people: rural workers opposing the destructive exploitation of the countryside in the Tibetan mountains and factory workers who have lost their jobs and consequently the basis of their entire existence in the wake of the great transformations.