Documentarian Ulrike Koch tracks the ritualized odyssey of nomadic Tibetan herdsmen to the dried salt lakes in the remote uncharted alpine desert that covers most of western Tibet. Four men make their arduous way across a hauntingly desolate landscape, sing their songs, tell their stories and, in weeks of backbreaking work, collect their salt-the precious "white gold" that protects them against dehydration in the aridity and altitude of their homeland. The film is an ethnographic-style look at a culture that is now teetering on the edge of extinction. But with its stunning cinematography, its vérité style, the guilelessness of its subjects, and the magnificence of its landscape, The Saltmen of Tibet is a dreamlike and entrancing experience.