Chinese Title: Nu Jiang, Yi Tiao Diu Shi De Xia Gu

French Title: Nujiang, La Vallée Perdue

Director: Lü Yue

Genre: Documentary

Region: China / France

Language: Chinese Mandarin

Running Time: 87min

Year of Production: 1989

Synopsis:

Nujiang, a snow surrounded valley in Yunnan, southern province of China, which stretches from Tibet to Burman. It is here that, cut off from the world, with a population of different ethnic groups: Lisu, Nu, Dulong, Tibetan, Yi, Kechin…

At the end of the nineteenth century, missionaries from France, Switzerland and the United States evangelized local people and invented a phonetic alphabet. The Revolution of 1949 drove the missionaries away, but didn’t stop their teaching being followed and remaining one of the pillars of the spiritual life of the region. Today, the tradition is preserved despite the absence of a priest for forty years.

The documentary presents the valley in its original primitive in a journey filled with amazing characters meetings.

Awards:

Winner of the Best Film of 1990 Paris Anthropology Film Festival