Bhutan has long been dubbed as the last Shangri-la for its pristine natural landscape and “the happiest country in the world” for having the concept of “gross national happiness” enshrined in its constitution. These perceptions will now become even more common currency with the country’s official Oscar submission Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, in which a cynical urbanite rediscovers his Himalayan homeland’s traditional ways of life in a village devoid of electricity but brimming with human goodness.
Photographer-turned-filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji’s directorial debut is a ceaselessly pleasant and picture-perfect offering marked by its uniformly virtuous (and unsurprisingly happy) cast of characters and its breathtaking scenery. Filmed solely on solar-charged equipment and featuring real-life residents of the titular far-flung Bhutanese hamlet – whose nuanced performances are a staggering feat in themselves, given that some of them haven’t left their village before, let alone seen a movie – the production itself is probably as much the story as the film itself.
Lunana’s journey to the Best International Film Oscars shortlist is certainly as long-winding as its protagonist’s protracted trek across the Bhutanese hinterlands. Having travelled far and wide on the festival circuit since its premiere in Busan in 2019, the film was originally slated for last year’s Academy Awards before it was disqualified for a hitch not of his own making: the Bhutanese authorities failed to set up an Oscars-endorsed selection committee before submitting the film.
Resubmitted last autumn by a newly-established film commission, Lunana has now scored a place on the 15-title international shortlist, 22 years after Bhutan’s first and only other Oscar submission, The Cup (2000). That film’s director, Khyentse Norbu, had a hand in propelling the young Dorji into the world of cinema, having employed him as a stills photgrapher and then as a producer on his 2016 Locarno entry Hema Hema: Sing Me A Song While I Wait.
Despite the backing of Huanxi Media, the Chinese arthouse outfit founded by a coterie of heavyweight award-winning cineastes who include Jia Zhangke and Zhang Yimou, Lunana’s rise to prominence remains a bigger surprise than The Cup, which counted Jeremy Thomas as one of its co-producers. Lunana can boast a creative advisor in the award-winning Taiwanese playwright and filmmaker Stan Lai Sheng-chuan and sound design by Taiwan veteran Tu Duu-chih.
Bhutan – and Bhutanese cinema – has certainly changed since the days of The Cup. With its story about a young monk’s attempt to install a TV in his monastery to watch a World Cup soccer match, that film reflected the country’s baby steps in opening up to the world. Two decades onwards, Lunana offers a social and cultural volte-face: here a worldly lad, with his imported possessions and ambitions, becomes aware of the importance of his roots.
When the film begins, Ugyen (Sherab Dorji) is perhaps the only grumpy guy in Bhutan. “Gross National Happiness” seems to be merely a slogan emblazoned on his creased T-shirt, as he goes through the motions during the final six months of his contract as a government-employed schoolteacher. He has eyes for a bigger prize: a new career as a singer in fun and sunny Australia.
Tutting at his lack of motivation, his supervisor metes out the ultimate punishment by assigning him to a post in Lunana, a remote village reached after an overnight bus ride and then a seven-day trek across wintry, mountainous terrain, far from the comparatively cosmopolitan comforts of the capital city, Thimphu. Cold, tired and unable to recharge his cellphone during the journey, Ugyen throws tantrums aplenty: he complains to his guide, Michen (Ugyen Norbu Lhendup) about the walk, disses the food and refuses to perform traditional rituals along the way.
When he arrives in impoverished Lunana, he immediately informs the village elder he will return to the capital as soon as possible. As he waits for Michen and his horses to prepare for the trek back, Ugyen meets his students and his initial skepticism melts away. Led by bright-eyed class prefect Pem (Pem Zam), the children are enthusiastic and eager to learn, voicing the hope their teacher will guide them to “touch the future”.
Ugyen’s city-slicker mask slips further when he meets Saldon (Kelden Lhamo Gurung), a young woman who spends her time singing beautiful traditional songs in the fields. As he learns the tunes and labors to make education possible for his young charges – this is probably one of the few instances in which we get to see how blackboards and chalk can be made by hand – he discovers the culture he should be rooting for, instead of the flimsy foreign life he has been fantasizing about all along.
Admittedly, this basic premise of a young urbanite’s rite of passage in rural lands is hardly something new. Recent Bhutanese festival titles, such as Dechen Roder’s noir-tinged Honeygiver Among the Dogs and Tashi Gyeltshen’s The Red Phallus, an ominous critique of gender oppression in the country, are indeed treading much more experimental ground. But Lunana remains an essential entry in the showcase of bubbling Bhutanese cinema, with its humanist spirit and its staggeringly striking imagery.
Jigme T. Tenzing’s camerawork evokes the Bhutanese natural landscape in all its glory, while production designer Tshering Dorji – who is more well-known for his on-screen performances like his leading turn in Hema Hema, and who also has a small role here – is sufficiently subtle in bringing out what life is like in the Bhutanese hinterlands.
And then there’s the yak. The scene in which the animal appears in the classroom, grazing away, is a masterful stroke that’s at once funny and also effective in illustrating the convergence of nature and culture in a country officially known as “the land of the thunder dragon”. Lunana isn’t loud, but its slow-burning beauty, erudite cinema technique and undimmed belief in humanity is educational for us all.
Director and screenwriter: Pawo Choyning Dorji
Cast: Sherab Dorji, Ugyen Norbu Lhendup, Kelen Lhamo Gurung, Pem Zam
Producers: Pawo Choyning Dorji, Steven Xiang, Stephanie Lai, Jia Honglin
Cinematography: Jigme T. Tenzing
Editor: Ku Hsiao-yun
Production designer: Tshering Dorji
Music: Hu Shuai
Sound: Tu Duu-chih
Production companies: Dangphu Dingphu: 3 Pigs (Bhutan) in association with Huanxi Media (China)
World sales: Films Boutique
In Dzhongkha and English
109 minutes
