• Director(s):

    PROST (RICHARD)

  • Producer(s):

    ARTE FRANCE, AUTEURS ASSOCIES

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2005

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French

  • Rights:

    NON-THEATRICAL, TV, VOD, DVD, INTERNET

Eighty kilometres to the northwest of Beijing, the inhabitants of Longbaoshan are fighting to save their village that is being swallowed up under the encroaching dust because of particularly bad sandstorms.

Pronounced warming of the Tibetan plateau region has increased the frequency and intensity of these storms which periodically threaten 1500 kilometres of the Chinese coastal line.

Here and there a few corn stems are scarcely showing their tips above the sand. In the background, the gilded dune looks like a mountain under the blazing sun. Just on the other side of the Great Wall, 72 kilometres from Beijing, the village of Longbaoshan is disappearing little by little. The inhabitants are stupefied and amazed. It has not rained for six months and nothing grows anymore, and they have been forced to go to a neighbouring village to work. In Longbaoshan, sand arrives every year from the northwest in increasingly thick clouds at a rate of 90,000 tons per year.