Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?

The Ice Builders transports viewers to Zanskar, a Himalayan desert valley located in the sparsely populated, high-elevation Ladakh region in northern India. The landscape is dotted with centuries-old Buddhist monasteries, and self-sufficiency has long been the only way to survive. However, over the past few decades, the outside world has been encroaching at an exponential rate. Glaciers that hold the water necessary for farming have been shrinking due to climate change, putting Zanskar communities at grave risk of disappearing.

The film documents how, with few resources besides water, gravity and ingenuity, locals are creating artificial glaciers that can preserve water for spring and summer farming. The project is the brainchild of the Ladakhi engineer and activist Sonam Wangchuk, who calls them ‘ice stupas’ in reference to the sacred Buddhist structures used for meditation. Dazzlingly captured by the Italian directors Francesco Clerici and Tommaso Barbaro, these structures do seem to possess a spiritual, ethereal beauty, and it’s perhaps tempting to view them as monuments to human creativity. However, Wangchuk cautions against it, arguing that they’re ultimately born of human failure.