CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND
“Thank you so much to everyone who joined our screening of Children of the Snow Land at Stroud Film Festival. It was a really special evening for us. We really enjoyed the questions afterwards, which were thoughtful, engaging and in some cases, moving. Proceeds from the screening ticket sales have raised a whopping £600 for Himalayan children. We've also had an extra £225 in donations since the screening to our fundraising platform at www.localgiving.com/snowlandjourneys. A huge thank you on behalf of the Himalayan teenagers who will receive this money to help them reintegrate with their families in June this year.”
Zara Balfour, Phil Briggs & Tsering Deki Lama
8th April
7.00pm
“An incredibly inspiring story from the roof of the world.”
Bear Grylls
This special online screening of CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND is part of Stroud Film Festival, in support of nonprofit organisation SNOWLAND JOURNEYS. The film will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s female protagonist, Tsering Deki, live from Nepal. She will be joined by the film’s director & producer Zara Balfour, who is Stroud-based, and Phil Briggs, Director of Snowland Journeys.
CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND tells the incredible story of a group of children born in the High Himalayas of Nepal; a remote area of great natural beauty but where life is extremely tough. From just four years old, some children are sent by their parents to the capital city, Kathmandu, to a school run by a Buddhist monk, in the hope that education will give them a better chance in life.
For ten years or more they are not able to see or speak to their parents, due to the remoteness of their villages.
Upon graduation, aged 16, the children must make the journey home; an arduous trek across mountains that takes them to the highest inhabited place on the planet; a faraway, off-grid land where the way of life has not changed for thousands of years. The young children who left their parents many years ago will return to their villages as teenagers who have been brought up in a world of mobile phones, social media and most modern conveniences. And then the earthquake strikes.
Directed by Zara Balfour and Marcus Stephenson, and executive produced by Christopher Hird, CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND film documents the scary, moving, funny and humbling stories from the world’s longest walk home from school. This film has been brought to the screen by
Dartmouth Films, Picture on the Wall Productions and Mayfly TV.
Partly filmed by the Nepali children featured in the film, CHILDREN OF THE SNOW LAND offers a view of a remote, ancient place, where the way of life has remained unchanged for the past 2,000 years and explores the human spirit’s extraordinary capacity to survive and thrive in difficult circumstances with meagre resources, whilst asking the universal question - what makes a family?
This screening is held in aid of SNOWLAND JOURNEYS, which will receive all proceeds from ticket sales. SNOWLAND JOURNEYS is a Stroud-based non-profit organisation which was founded by the film’s director/producer Zara Balfour to offer sustainable long-term support to the children, school and mountain families who she got to know whilst she was making the film.
Joanna Lumley is the patron of Snowland Journeys. www.snowlandjourneys.com
Outdoor learning and expedition expert Phil Briggs joined Zara and together they developed the concept for Snowland Journeys, always working with the beneficiaries to ensure a needs-led programme of support, to help enable Himalayan children to fulfil their rights to maintain contact with their families, communities and culture, alongside their right to education. Snowland Journeys also develops livelihoods for mountain communities and provides educational experiences and mental health support for young people in the UK, as well as regenerative travel expeditions in Nepal.