About us
Context
Magsar and Ankhaa raise their children with their reindeer in northern Mongolia. Every summer, they host tourists and that’s how they met Chloe who organises horse rides in the Taiga. Over the years, they built up a relationship and eventually the Dukha family invited them to spend part of the winter with them in the remote valleys on the border with Siberia. It was the first time that they had welcomed visitors during the winter.
While Ankhaa stays in the village with her young school-age children, Magsar and his two eldest sons keep the herd higher up, where food is easier to find under the snow. At night, the temperature drops, the wind blows and the wolves howl.
Dominique joined them to film this unlikely encounter and they all shared the warmth of a tiny stove in the camp’s only tepee. The reality that both sides discovered in these cramped conditions changed them all forever.
When I decided to film these reindeer herders in Mongolia, I had prepared myself for a very different world.
What touched me the most when I found myself stranded with them in that tiny tepee was incredibly banal: the tenderness of a father towards his two sons who were about to make important life choices.
Rather than making an ethnographic film about the Dukhas, it is the intensity of this universal story that I want to share.
Film maker
Biography and Filmography
Dominique holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University in California and a PhD from the University of Caen, France. He has been a researcher in Artificial Intelligence, a professor in engineering schools and a founder of start-ups. Dominique is also the founder of Cap Expé, a community of adventurers created to encourage them to live out their boldest dreams and, to embark on such bonding adventures by taking responsibility for the risks involved. For more than 30 years, he has accompanied many young people in their discovery of the great outdoors, both horizontal and vertical.
More recently, as an extension of his passion for sharing, he has begun to make films about such adventures. His first three films, « The Nahanni Whisperer« , « Altaitude » and « Loic and the Flolopapys » have been shown at numerous festivals around the world. They have won several international awards, including the Best 2020 Climbing Film award at the Kendal Mountain Festival in the UK. (See hist complete Film Portfolio.)
I like the saying « when we ride a horse, we borrow freedom » because I feel that by understanding animal languages, we broaden our horizons and our ability to see the world through more than our own eyes.
Horse trainer & writer
Short biography
Chloe Philips-Harris is a horse trainer, writer and expedition leader from the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. She’s has competed in eventing up to 4* level with sport horses and has worked with nearly 100 wild horses from New Zealand’s Kaimanawa Ranges and the Far North region. She has a passion for wild horses and wild places and her first book, Fearless, tells of her heritage from Texas and the strong horse tradition where she grew up, to tough horse races and explorations on camel and reindeer in remote places such as the endless steppes of Central Asia and the deserts of Australia.
She is concerned about animal welfare and seeks to understand and document traditional animal husbandry practices such as those of the Dukhas and their ancient pastoralism. She has visited this ethnic group many times and has developed a connection with their practices that correlates with her own approach as a horse whisperer.