Mountain Patrol

Mountain Patrol (Kekexili, 2004) is a Chinese drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Lu Chuan. The film is rooted in real events: in the late 1990s, volunteers in China's remote Kekexili plateau formed an unofficial patrol to stop poachers who had killed off most of the local Tibetan antelope population for their wool.

A Beijing journalist joins the patrol after one of its members dies, and ends up inside a pursuit across terrain above 4,000 metres where altitude and cold are as likely to kill as the people they're hunting. Lu Chuan shot on location and keeps the camera flat — no swelling score, no heroic framing. When someone dies, the film simply moves on.

The film claimed the Golden Shell at San Sebastián and was China's entry for the 2005 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Watch Mountain Patrol online on iFILM.