Lunana – Das Glück liegt im Himalaya(2019)
Ein junger Lehrer wird in ein entlegenes Dorf im Himalaja zwangsversetzt. Dort lernt er viel von seinen Schüler*innen und den anderen Menschen im Dorf.
Ein junger Lehrer wird in ein entlegenes Dorf im Himalaja zwangsversetzt. Dort lernt er viel von seinen Schüler*innen und den anderen Menschen im Dorf.
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.
Sangai, a teenage girl living with her father in a village of inland Bhutan, is not happy with her father, who makes wooden phalluses, believed to have mysterious power, and playing a festival clown with a red mask at a local festival. She reluctantly delivers the phalluses to neighbors but she is followed by dozens of men with red masks and costumes when walking through the hill. Conflict and tension grows between the father, who has concerns about his successor, and Sangai, who has a clandestine relationship with a married man.
Set in the 1970s, the story follows brother and sister Kuenphen and Jamyang where in a remote Bhutanese village, they learn traditional archery from their old warrior grandfather. Their mothers sudden sickness gives Kuenphen the opportunity to explore the world outside the village, while sister Jamyang must stay home to weave, cook and get married. Filmed entirely on location in the breathtaking Himalaya mountains, the actors are made up of local highland village people. The 'ordinary' current traditional medieval life in tiny isolated Bhutan is fascinating and anything but ordinary from a modern western point of view.