A film
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom — Pawo Choyning Dorji, 2019.
Pawo Choyning Dorji's quiet 2019 film about a reluctant young teacher posted to the remotest school in the world is the contemporary Bhutanese film most international audiences have encountered. The story is small and unhurried — a teacher arrives at Lunana, the children sing him into the village, a yak is brought into the schoolroom. The film became the first Bhutanese production nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature in 2022. It is also a quietly accurate portrait of where the country sits between tradition and the world.
Film · Pawo Choyning Dorji · 2019 · 1h 49m · Dzongkha (with English subtitles)
Why we picked it
If a visitor watches one Bhutanese film before arriving, this is the one. The pacing is unhurried, the landscape is the real Lunana (8 days' walk from the road-head), and the cast is largely local non-actors. It teaches more about contemporary Bhutan than any documentary we know — the tension between the village and the city, the seriousness with which education is regarded, the place of the yak in the highland economy.
Editorial note
Pawo Choyning Dorji is one of two contemporary Bhutanese filmmakers with sustained international visibility (the other is Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche — see [[dzongsar-jamyang-khyentse|his entry]]). Dorji was first known as the producer of Khyentse Rinpoche's films before directing Lunana himself. His follow-up, The Monk and the Gun (2023), was Bhutan's submission to the 2024 Academy Awards. Visitors with serious interest in Bhutanese cinema should watch both; Lunana is the more accessible entry-point. The film's Lunana setting is the same Lunana visitors reach on the Snowman Trek — see [[snowman-trek|the Snowman Trek entry]] — though only a small fraction of trekkers go that far.
“I want to touch the sky.”
— Pem Zam (as herself), Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019)
Where to find it
Bhutan / Dangphu Dingphu (2019) — Academy Award nomination 2022
More from Pawo Choyning Dorji: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawo_Choyning_Dorji
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