DECEMBER 26TH, 2004
The devastating tsunami sweeps 250,000 people off the coast of Southeast Asia. Sumatra, Indonesia and Thailand were particularly hard hit. Among the victims was Natacha Zana, a young woman and freelance journalist who, at the end of her reporting assignment, took a few days' rest on the paradise island of Koh Phi Phi. Daughter of Élisabeth and Jean-Claude Zana (a journalist with Paris-Match), Natacha has been a globe-trotter ever since she was a child, and is deeply involved in protecting the environment, particularly the marine environment. In April 2005, in an attempt to overcome the “insurmountable”, Jean-Claude and Élisabeth, together with Carole Sédillot, Natacha's godmother and Élisabeth's childhood friend, created NAT Association, and committed themselves to helping, firstly, children orphaned by the wave, and then others in great social difficulty. Élisabeth leaves Paris and settles in Thailand, where an adventure she could never have imagined begins. An adventure made up of resilience, cultural adaptation and extraordinary encounters. This is the story of 20 years of this special destiny. But as you'll soon discover, it's really a story of filial love, unbroken by death. A love that has been transferred to families in great difficulty, in Bankuankojan, a village in the south of the Land of Smiles, in the province of Krabi.

Trained at the École Supérieure d'Études Chorégraphiques and after a career as a classical dancer, Élisabeth Zana worked as a dance teacher and became co-director of the Conservatoire d'Orly (94) alongside Françoise Legrand, conductor and director of the conservatoire. She also organizes cultural events, including international ones. Interested in the study of traditions from an early age, she discovered many dance-related traditions, which led her to publish La Danse et le Sacré (Dance and the Sacred) with Éditions Dervy, a work later reprinted with Éditions Safran. Natacha was her only daughter.