That magic gushes off the screen in the awe-inspiring The Velvet Queen ★★★★☆

There in the top left of the image, right next to the movie title and standing motionless against the sky, is that him already? The rare snow leopard world-famous French wildlife photographer Vincent Munier and travel writer Sylvain Tesson are so eager to see? That would be something, already performing the coveted beast when The Velvet Queen barely ten minutes. But maybe this is a completely different animal or not at all, you mistake a rock for an ear. Perhaps some onlookers don’t even notice that a panther might be sitting there.

The Velvet Queen, written, directed and filmed by Munier and partner Marie Amiguet, likes to put the audience in the photographer’s perspective. Munier’s oeuvre is so awe-inspiring because it perfectly reconciles the animal and landscape, and in The Velvet Queen you see what meditative discipline is required for that. Munier, who, in addition to his photographic work, includes: a TV documentary about the Ethiopian wolf made is particularly adept at the art of spotting: he can lie on the grass for hours on end, peering through his binoculars or telephoto lens. He is clearly in his natural habitat as he scans the horizon in silence.

He and Tesson do just that, during their snow leopard quest on foot through the Tibetan Highlands. Amiguet’s film camera also bites into the environment. We see a ridge dotted with black yaks, a Pallas cat that jerks off towards a hamster, a saker falcon that rests almost invisibly on a mountain ledge. Just to name a few of the animals that make their appearance, and which their human observers will often have seen before they have seen them.

Your ears are just as pricked by The Velvet Queen (original title: La panthere des neiges† Just after Pieter-Rim the Kroons Wadden homage Silence of the Tides this is again a documentary that mainly focuses on concentration and silence. The sophisticated sound design draws attention to everything that appears in the film, as does the lightwistful score by Warren Ellis (in collaboration with Nick Cave). Music that also hopes with bated breath for the arrival of the panther. ‘Where are you, where are you’, you can hear Cave whisper, framed by enigmatic piano and string chords. Meanwhile, Tesson muses about waiting for an animal that may never show up.

Tesson, praised for his personal travelogues, was invited by Munier to accompany him on an expedition he would normally have undertaken on his own. The film is extra disarming because of the calm harmony between the men, with Tesson acting like a student and saying again and again that he only now realizes what it means to look at the world around you with patience and attention. “It’s going to be quite a tour,” Munier says when they’ve settled down somewhere between the rocks, “but just being here and seeing how everything slowly wakes up after a cold night, that’s magical.”

That magic gushes from the (preferably the largest possible) screen in The Velvet Queen, which won, among other things, the César (the French Oscar) for best documentary. The close-ups of fluffy bird silhouettes are almost as magnificent as the images (and photos) of a fox diving into a warbler’s army. But the passing herd of deer, watched as the morning sun lights up in their breathing clouds, is also impressive. The gifts are great, once you pay attention and look.

Thanks to Ellis’ soundtrack, such scenes also take on something fragile, as if you are witnessing scenes that could soon be a thing of the past at the hands of humans. But that interpretation is entirely up to the viewer. Munier and Amiguet deliberately ignore environmental and climate issues. “It’s a choice to expose the despair,” Tesson says in the voice-over, “or to celebrate the beauty.” The Velvet Queen unambiguously chooses the latter, even if something the film does with Silence of the Tides shares.

Tesson’s commentary is the film’s only (minor) weakness, because he is allowed to devote just too many woolly sentences to his awareness process. ‘We survey the landscapes without the certainty that we are going to harvest’, it sounds then. “We wait for a shadow, in silence facing the void.” Tesson also processed his notes into a book, published in the Netherlands as the snow leopard† Undoubtedly, his musings on paper are much more effective than when they accompany images that regularly make any comment unnecessary.

But even though Tesson’s voice-over is sometimes a nuisance in The Velvet Queen, then it’s still a very sympathetic jammer. Just try to find the right words, or shut up in time, when you are confronted with the mighty beauty of this landscape and its inhabitants.