Himalaya is a groundbreaking and genuine portrait of the Dolpo region of Nepal. The story revolves around Tinle, an old chief, who loses his eldest son and subsequently blames Karma, the leader of the Dolpopas, forbidding him to lead the annual yak caravan across the mountains to exchange salt for grain. Karma betrays Tinle and leads the caravan anyway, forcing Tinle to assemble his own caravan and thus fight for his leadership. What follows is a mesmerizing adventure that evokes the forces of both ancestral strife and nature at its most treacherous.

I shared a few words about the film with its French director, Eric Valli.

Why the Yak caravans?

It's a great subject for an adventure film. People tell me it is the first "Tibetan Western." And it is very much like a Western in many ways: The Yak caravan is so epic, so adventurous; it was so natural to make a film about it.

As well as a challenge?

Indeed it was a challenge. This film was considered an impossible task. It was mad to shoot a film like that, first because you do a film that stands aside from all the recipes that Hollywood or even my native French movies use. There are no actors; these are all regular people going about their real lives. It's all shot on location, at 15,000 feet in an area that is three weeks away from the nearest airstrip, without any studio work. There are no special effects; everything is real. No film has ever been shot like this in the history of cinema.

No professional actors?

It was a film about them I was doing, not about me: about the Nepalese, about their culture, their traditions, about authenticity, about adventure, about love.

About love?

Basically in this film--as in all the films I have done, as in all the stories I have published with National Geographic or others--this film is a love story, a love story between this place, these people, and me. It's very simple.