“Hugonnier travelled to the Panjsher Valley to make a film investigating the historical agency of its landscape. Long described as an earthly paradise, the valley had been broached by neither Soviet nor Taliban forces.

At the centre of Le fils, we find Olivier, a shop teacher, who is asked to admit Francis to his class, a teenager who wants to learn woodworking.

“Without question the greatest work to have come out of the Chinese documentary movement, and must be ranked among the most extraordinary achievements of world cinema in the new century.”