Dark Red Forest

Once a year, ten thousand Buddhist nuns gather on the top of the Tibetan plateau in Sichuan Province to seek enlightenment in adverse weather conditions. In the Yarchen monastery, they build small wooden huts, reminiscent of coffins, in which they spend the one hundred coldest days of the year. Instead of telling personal stories, we follow the monastery and its daily rituals in action.

We witness the physical transform into the spiritual and the individual transform into the collective, all in perfect harmony with this majestic landscape. Thousands of women clad in red robes become a living forest that grows in defiance of dictatorship, atop the Roof of the World.

Introduction by orientalist Märt Läänemets.