This gentle, sweet-natured movie is the debut feature from Bhutan-born and US-educated film-maker Pawo Choyning Dorji: last year it became the first Bhutanese film to get an Oscar nomination for best international feature (losing out to Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car). Despite these unusual credentials, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom runs on pretty familiar, even traditional lines, although its likability and humour – and almost childlike faith in the power of singing to overcome melancholy and adversity – means you’ll find yourself smiling along.
Ugyen (Sherab Dorji) is a young man in the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu; since his parents’ death, he lives with his formidable grandmother who is exasperated at his aimlessness and shiftlessness. He is four years into a five-year teacher training course, but only wants to hang out with his girlfriend and other friends, and nurtures a dream to go out to Australia and make it as a singer. But a stern government official informs him that he must do a season teaching at the village school of Lunana in the country’s mountainous north-west. It’s the most remote school anywhere in the world, she tells him, with lipsmacking satisfaction. Ugyen whines that he has an “altitude problem”. More like an attitude problem, snaps the official. Like it or not, he’s going.
