Richard Gere has sent a message of support to the people of Nepal and Tibet following devastating landslides and flash floods on their border in which at least a thousand people are believed to have died.

“My heart is with the people of Nepal and Tibet today,” Gere wrote in a message posted on social media on Thursday.

The actor and humanitarian has had strong ties with Nepal and Tibet for close to 50 years having first travelled to the former with Brazilian painter Sylvia Martins in 1978, where his meeting with Tibetan monks and Lamas led to his conversion to Tibetan Buddhism in the early 1980s.

He met the Tibetan Buddhism’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in India in the early 1980s and ever since has advocated for the human rights of Tibetan people and the preservation of their culture.

“There are places in this world that, once they touch your heart, never really leave you. The Himalayas — their people, their spirituality, their extraordinary beauty — have been part of my life and my heart for many years,” continued Gere in his post.

“Seeing the devastation caused by these floods, from Nepal to Gyirong and the Shigatse region of Tibet, is heartbreaking. Search and rescue efforts are only just beginning, and these first hours are filled with uncertainty, but also with hope. Today there are no borders in our compassion.”

Gere’s message came some 24 hours after a massive glacial collapse sparked flash floods in the Himalayan Nepal-Tibet border region.

Terrifying footage showed a wall of water mixed with debris and ice crashing into a border crossing in Gyirong, sending people running for their lives as it then swept down the valley destroying everything in its path.

Figures around the loss of life and missing are still unclear, but more than 1,000 people are reported to be missing, with at least half of then tourists hailing from countries including the U.S., Australia, Britain, France and Canada.

Austrian filmmaker Manuel Wetscher has fictionalized autobiographical experiences in his feature film debut Eklipse, which will world premiere in the Horizons section of the 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 5.

The title, spelled with a “k” in both its German and English versions, means “eclipse,” signaling how the movie touches on what a solar eclipse does to our vision and understanding – it both brings darkness to Earth as the moon obscures people’s view of the sun, but it also briefly reveals things that otherwise remain hidden to the naked eye.

Eklipse is inspired by Wetscher’s experience when details of the death of his father from AIDS back in the 1990s were kept from him. The film stars Moritz Hohlrieder as Tomy and Finley Brown as his best friend Chris. The two teenagers spend a summer at an alpine dairy farm in Austria, helping Tomy’s uncle, portrayed by Hannes Perkmann, with the milking and exploring the outdoors. But their time together is not just fun and games.

“Tomy’s mother decides to continue keeping the real reason why his father is in hospital a secret from her son,” notes a synopsis for Eklipse. “When Chris learns that Tomy’s father is in hospital with ‘the gay disease,’ he becomes frightened – and Tomy is suddenly confronted with rejection and his own family’s silence.”

Lenz Moretti, Lisa Schützenberger and Barbara Romaner also feature in the film that explores fears and taboos and how they can obscure important facts.

Wetscher co-wrote the film with Bernhard Jarosch, with whom he also collaborated before on the short films Magma and Four Seasons, on which he was also a co-writer, as well as At Night When Mice Scream, in which Jarosch acted. Simone Hart is the cinematographer on Eklipse, while Anna Kirst edited the movie.

Films Boutique is handling world sales on Eklipse. Its production companies are Austria’s Eutopiafilm and Italy’s Albolina Film.

THR can today exclusively premiere a clip from the Venice-premiering movie that will take you back to the 1990s in the Alps. Get ready to meet Tomy and Chris. And get ready for a scene that will hopefully not leave your head spinning the same way that the Earth spins on its axis. Watch the exclusive clip from Eklipse right here.