About Us

Context

Magser and Aankhaa are raising their children with their reindeer in the north of Mongolia. Each summer, they welcome tourists and that’s how they met Chloe who was organising horse rides in the Taiga and Regis who was documenting pastoralism. Over the years, connections were forged and the Dukha family eventually 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 Aankhaa stays in the village with their young school-age children, Magser and his two oldest sons keep the herd higher up, where food is more readily available under the snow. At night, the temperature drops, the wind blows and the wolves howl.

Dominique joined them to film this improbable 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, profoundly changed them all.

When I decided to film these reindeer herders in Mongolia, I had prepared myself to meet a totally  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 on the verge of making 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.

Dominique Snyers

Film maker

Biography and Filmography

Dominique holds a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University in California and a Ph.D. from the University of Caen, France. Successively researcher in Artificial Intelligence, engineering school professor and founders  of start-ups, Dominique also launched the Cap Expé association, a community of adventurers formed to encourage them to live out their boldest dreams and above all to embark on such adventures by managing the risks they entail autonomously. For more than 30 years, he has accompanied many young people in their discovery of the great outdoors, both horizontal and vertical.

More recently, he began making films about such adventures in yet another extension of his passion for sharing. His first three films, « The Nahanni Whisperer« , « Altaitude » and « Loic and the Flolopapys » have been shown in numerous festivals around the world. They have received several international awards, including the Best 2020 Climbing Film award at the Kendal Mountain Festival in the UK.

I like the say « in riding a horse, we borrow freedom » as I feel that by understanding animal languages, we widen our horizons and the ability to see the world through more than our own eyes.

Chloe Philips-Harris

Horse trainer & writer

Biography

Chloe Philips-Harris is a horse trainer, author and expedition leader from the Bay Of Islands in New Zealand. She’s has competed to 4* level in eventing with sport horses and  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 about her heritage from Texas and the strong horse tradition where she grew up, to tough horse races and exploratory journeys on camels and reindeers in remote places such as the endless steppes of Central Asia and Australia’s deserts.

She is concerned about animal welfare and is searching to understand and document traditional animal husbandry practices like the ones from the Dukhas and their ancient pastoralism. She visited this ethnic group many times, building a connection with their practices, correlating with her own approach as a horse whisperer.

I take photographs and I write. I record lives. « Documentary photographer » makes it serious, but at the end of the day, it’s a matter of making the picture with a sense of belonging, ethnographic intelligence and empathy. Some people call it humanism, I just call it presence : my photographs are about them through me.

Regis Defurnaux

Documentary photographer

Biography

Régis Defurnaux studied History (MA), Philosophy (MA) and Anthropology (DEA). He described mechanisms of identity alteration in migratory contexts before conducting a research (PhD) in epistemology about binary thinking applied to ecology, using ethnographic material from Japan. He worked for 10 years in the academic world as a teaching and researching assistant at Université Laval, Université de Namur and Kyoto University before becoming a documentary photographer for NGOs. His photographic assignments range from migratory routes in the Balkans and human rights in refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan to pastoralism, nomadic culture and climate change in Central Asia. He worked for 4 years in Mongolia and built a strong and genuine connection with the country and specially with the Dukha people.