Discoveries from Bhutan World Cinema

Kelas Bintang is back with this pack of drama called Keramat Tunggak Part 2.

A teacher, in search of inspiration, travels to the most remote school in the world, where he ends up realizing how important his job is and appreciating the value of yak dung.

An American travels to Bhutan searching for a valuable antique rifle and crosses paths with a young monk who wanders through the serene mountains, instructed by his teacher to make things right again.

The dazzling new film from Bhutanese lama and filmmaker Khyentse Norbu (The Cup, Travellers and Magicians) chronicles a sacred jungle ritual whose masked, anonymous participants seek after complete self-knowledge — or descend into thievery, violation, and murder.

A good hearted man works to woo his boss upon the insistence of his wife in order to further comfort his life. Cold and hard, malicious whispers of the boss's life follows her but all is not as it seems.

While the World Cup is being played in France, two young Tibetan refugees arrive at a monastery in India. The atmosphere of serene contemplation is soon disrupted by soccer fever, as the two students desperately seek a TV to watch the final.

The documentary team follows two happiness agents in their forties who spend a month and a half on the road twice a year, going door-to-door with their questionnaires in isolated villages in the Himalayas. The filmmakers undertake to provide an intimate insight into the daily lives and desires of Bhutanese people, and also seek the answer to the universal question of whether happiness can really be measured. Gross National Happiness promises a heart-warming journey into a mysterious, fairytale-like world, which is the exact opposite of the social order dominated by consumption and desires.

In a small Indian village, Lila is learning to dance from her mother, Devadasi, a Bharatanatyam dancer. She falls in love with low class Shyam, who dreams of becoming a sculptor. Shyam asks Lila to model for him as he sculpts a goddess, and the two become very close. However, their relationship is discovered by the village chief Subha, and Lila decides to sacrifice her happiness for her mother and Shyam.

A young government official, named Dondup, who is smitten with America (he even has a denim gho) dreams of escaping there while stuck in a beautiful but isolated village. He hopes to connect in the U.S. with a visa out of the country. He misses the one bus out of town to Thimphu, however, and is forced to hitchhike and walk along the Lateral Road to the west, accompanied by an apple seller, a Buddhist monk with his ornate, dragon-headed dramyin, a drunk, a widowed rice paper maker, and his beautiful daughter, Sonam.

In the remote Bhutan, an undercover detective investigates the case of a missing Buddhist nun and falls into a risky alliance with his only suspect, an alluring young woman known as the village "demoness".

A house-warming weekend reunites four friends after a major fallout only to discover that they still have a lot of pain and anger to deal with if their friendship needs to be saved.

Peyangki is a dreamy and solitary eight-year-old monk living in Laya, a Bhutanese village perched high in the Himalayas. Soon the world will come to him: the village is about to be connected to electricity, and the first television will flicker on before Peyangki's eyes.

Milarepa depicts the humble beginnings of the man who was to become Tibet's greatest saint. A true story based on centuries-old oral traditions, a youthful Milarepa is propelled into a world of sorrow and betrayal after his father's sudden death. Destitute and hopeless, he sets out to learn black magic - and exact revenge on his enemies - encountering magicians, demons, an enigmatic teacher and unexpected mystical power along the way. But it is in confrontation with the consequences of his anger that he learns the most. Photographed in the stunning Lahaul-Spiti region of Northern India, Milarepa offers a provocative parallel to the cycle of violence and retribution consuming today's world.

OLOM, 29, a passionate YouTube creator and newly appointed school teacher in Bhutan has a one-night stand with a married woman, DEKI, 32. When she discovers that she’s pregnant, Dolom concocts a plan to cover up the affair and save his reputation. On his way to rendezvous with Deki, Dolom gets into a motorcycle accident and wakes up in a bizarre, and chaotic world. ​ Slowly he begins to realize that he is in fact dead. With the help of a mysterious guide, Dolom navigates this in-between realm and faces his storied past and the consequences of his actions. As time collapses around him, he must choose to right his wrongs and let go of his attachment to his former self or be trapped to wander in a dream-like in-between state for timelessness.

Bhutan horror film

Brother and sister Gyembo and Tashi are normal teenagers. They love soccer and their phones. In their Himalayan village, their father oversees a Buddhist temple that has been in the family for generations. He hopes his son will one day take over his duties. He would prefer that Gyembo leave his modern English-language school in favor of a monk school. In this thoughtful and tender portrait of a Bhutanese family, the generation gap is as large as their love for one another. Celibacy doesn't offer an enticing future to an adolescent boy, which Gyembo's father understands. Nonetheless, he still tries to convince his son that being a monk offers many advantages. Meanwhile, Tashi feels more like a boy than a girl, and dreams of a life as a pro soccer player. She wants to attend a soccer camp that would be the first step in being selected for the national team. Unfortunately, though happiness is high on the political agenda in Bhutan, not all wishes come true.

Aum Penjor is a transgender singer in a queer club, and a sort of local celebrity. One rainy night, while another one-night-stand is slipping away, she hears crying and finds an abandoned baby amongst the cartons. When she takes the baby home, she begins to develop feelings she never imagined having. Aum Penjor suddenly discovers she has maternal instincts that lead her to a whole new type of journey.

Bhutanese horror movie.

Jimmy, an American Bhutanese food anthropology student, returns to Bhutan after 20 years to heal his fractured family through food, uncovering secrets that bring reconciliation, love, and renewed bonds between his mother, step-sister, and extended family.

In Bhutan, a country of 700,000 people, everyone knows everyone else. Nima, a schoolteacher, faces trouble when an explicit intimate video surfaces online, featuring a woman who looks exactly like her. Determined to calm her students’ outraged parents, Nima embarks on a quest to find her naughty lookalike. But her doppelganger, Meto, has disappeared without a trace. The locals, struck by Nima’s uncanny resemblance to Meto, begin to believe she is Meto’s long-lost ghost. The village elders suggest singing Aum Tshomo’s sacred song to unravel the mystery. Now, Nima must open her heart and sing to rebuild her shattered life.

Bhutanese horror film.

Are tourists destroying the planet-or saving it? How do travelers change the remote places they visit, and how are they changed? From the Bolivian jungle to the party beaches of Thailand, and from the deserts of Timbuktu, Mali to the breathtaking beauty of Bhutan, GRINGO TRAILS traces stories over 30 years to show the dramatic long-term impact of tourism on cultures, economies, and the environment.

Bhutan's first slasher film.

Sonam is arranged to marry his cousin sister, but he finds out that cross cousin marriage results to a disabled child. How would he tell his family about this and what would he do to break his promise?

The film is not about walking dead but it is about rituals, as a particular ritualcan make a dead person alive but not in the form of zombies.

When religious tradition becomes a threat to Bhutan's Nature, one man braves society and sets out on a mission to change the minds and hearts of the locals.

Logline What appears as a normal day in a young man’s life, who is jobless and without friends, may not necessarily be normal for him. Synopsis A young man who lives in an attic in a suburb in Thimphu goes about his daily routine – chanting prayers, watering the dying flowers, browsing through social media, and watching men his age play futsal through a small window in his attic. Everything is mundane. Ordinary. But behind the façade of this ordinariness, he is trapped in the attic – powerless, stagnant and immobile. Outside his attic, life goes on as usual.

Sequel to the hit horror movie.

In Bhutan, 11-year-old Yangchen’s father is the country’s glacier specialist, and thus the only person authorized to climb the mountains, which are considered to be sacred. He spends months away from home measuring the rapidly melting glaciers. While hiking through the snow to the farthest reaches of the Bhutanese Himalayas, he faithfully shoots videos for his daughter with his phone. These videos take the viewer into breathtaking landscapes, but it also becomes increasingly apparent that something irreversible is happening.

Buelwa is a film about a monk forced to leave the monastery and explore the streets of Thimphu (Bhutan). His life turns upside down.

"Between Mountains and Oceans" follows Chencho, a Bhutanese immigrant in Australia, as he navigates isolation and cultural displacement with the help of his friends Duba and Ugyel.

In the village of Kingaling, the vengeful spirit of Jaza Dhuem is unleashed, leaving terror in its wake. Only Karchangma, a young woman bound by prophecy, has the power to stop her if she can uncover the truth before it’s too late.

An engineer suffering from a terminal illness seeks to confess to his crush.

Horror film.

A young man who travels to Thimphu for work gets entangled in a messy ruckus with a notorious gang. He must either fight them or join them to survive.

Absurd and slapstick comedy

Tandin and Tobden are the happiest couple in town but when social pressure to start a family begins to mount, even love doesn't seem enough.

Rinzin Jurmey chose to join a monastery and dedicate his life to Buddhism at the age of 11, loving its rituals and traditions. Now 18, he moves harmoniously between mountain village and city, embracing tradition and pop culture, religion and hip-hop, prayer and video games. With guidance from cinematographer Cat Papadimitriou, Jurmey documents the ways in which he – and his country – are striving to preserve ancient practices while embracing modernity.

A girl, born deaf and wishing to hear, travels through the four elements of nature: earth, air, fire and water. But when her wish is granted, and she manages to hear the sounds of this earth, she is disappointed, overwhelmed with the noises of our digital world. Slowly, she falls back into silence.

“Birds in Cages" is a poignant tale centered around Dechen and Pema, two close friends who endure numerous hardships. Pema's mother's early death led her to be raised by her father, who later marries her off to an elderly man due to financial struggles. Despite her efforts, her life spirals into prostitution. Dechen, also trapped in an unhappy marriage, longs for her childhood friend Jamyang. Pema's abusive husband causes her tragic death during her pregnancy. Distraught, Dechen seeks justice for her friend and transforms her life, standing against her oppressive father and embracing a new path with Jamyang. The story culminates in a hopeful journey where Dechen, Jamyang, her mother, and daughter embark on a honeymoon trip, symbolizing newfound freedom and happiness.

Sonam Drugyel, a loyal Boedgarp, is torn between love and duty. While entangled in a love triangle with Phuntsho Choden and Lhachoe, he uncovers a plot to murder the Dzongpon. As he rushes to save his leader, he learns shocking truths about Phuntsho Choden’s role in past betrayals.

Bhutanese horror film.

An awaressness/advocacy movie about our Sazhi/The Land.

Dema, a demure seventeen-year-old girl, works at a butcher shop in the capital city of Thimphu in Bhutan. Nothing seems to happen in this quiet city, where time seems to have stood still. Dema experiences the world through the occasional visits of passersby and customers.

The traditional ‘3 Year 3 Month Retreat’ or ‘Lo Sum Choe Sum’ is practiced by Buddhist monks, nuns and other devout practitioners. 3 years, 3 months, and 3 days is calculated as the time needed to achieve a higher state of clarity and motivation. By cutting oneself off from the world, and delving into the inner mind, the retreat is supposed to transform the practitioner. Can Lhamo, a young, wounded girl facing the harsh gaze of the world, find her own form of retreat and redemption? Lo Sum Choe Sum was Bhutan’s first entry into the Berlinale Shorts Competition. It was made in 2015 by filmmaker Dechen Roder, who later produced and wrote and directed the well-acclaimed Honeygiver Among the Dogs.

A documentary about Bhutan's last postal runner made by Bhutan's first filmmaker. 49 year old Ugyen Tenzin is the last postal runner of Bhutan. He has been working for the Post for 26 years ago. He must walk by foot, by himself, for about a week, through the mountains of Bhutan to deliver the mail to Lingshi, a high mountain village (at 12,000 ft). The documentary follows him and the treacherous albeit beautiful journey, in both the winter and summer seasons, and was shot over three years. A documentary by Bhutan’s last postal runner by Bhutan’s first filmmaker.

A school teacher is assigned to Bhutan's remotest school. Midway into his session he is told that the school has to be closed as the inhabitants leave the valley to escape the winter. One of the best documentaries from Bhutan and the first one to win several international awards in Japan, South Korea, Netherlands and Switzerland, School Among Glaciers is truly a masterpiece.

A girl with a weird birth mark on her face joins the Miss Bhutan contest.

This slice-of-life, multi-character, moving documentary puts us in the shoes of people living with disabilities in Bhutan. Their different disabilities don’t prevent them from pursuing their dreams. “My friends, they enjoy the beauty of nature. Birds might be flying in the sky, it might be snowing on mountain peaks, and then one of nature’s gifts is the rainbow, it might be so splendid, but we can’t see it”. A young man works at a radio station (he is also partly blind). Another stitches uniforms for kids in the village (while in a wheelchair). They all dream of living a meaningful life and, in many different ways, of being an active part of their communities. Dreams that are not so easy to fulfill given the myriad challenges they face in a country known as the land of “Gross National Happiness”. Much more must be done to support their inclusion. “You should be able to explore all kinds of jobs and unreservedly enjoy your life,” says one of them.

Made by Bhutan's first filmmaker (Ugyen Wangdi), Price of Knowledge (1999) is also Bhutan's first documentary. Day by day, 11 year old Sherab Dorji walks three hours to school. In the early morning he meets the other children of his village at a chorten, a Buddhist shrine. From there, they walk to school together singing. The road leads across a mountain and through the woods. The parents are constantly afraid of their children meeting up with wild animals along the path. When Sherab walks the last part by himself in the evening, he prays aloud to fight his fear. They walk so much, his father says, that their socks tear within a week. Sherab’s family depends on subsistence farming. Sherab and his family’s life are presented in a touching realistic portrait of rural Bhutan in 1999.