Shen Mo's of Kibber

Indian Shorts

Sep 15

Synopsis

In Kibber, Spiti, women once saw the snow leopard as a threat. Today, they are Shen-mos, named after the female snow leopard, helping protect a species they feared. As disappearing snowfall reshapes life in the mountains, they are finding new livelihoods rooted in coexistence with wildlife and community.

From the filmmaker

Coming from the same Himalayan landscape, I have seen my own mother in these women. They have spent their lives raising livestock, caring for their land, and living alongside the snow leopard - a predator once seen as a threat to the animals they nurtured like their own children. Witnessing these same women, many over the age of fifty and who had never stepped beyond their village, installing camera traps to monitor snow leopards through the Nature Conservation Foundation deeply moved me.