“Irresistibly entertaining and uplifting.”
--Richard Kuipers, Variety
“A simple yet effective and beautifully shot film about the importance of education and the preservation of tradition and nature.”
--Rene Sanchez, Cine Sin FRonteras
“A breath of fresh air.”
--Ang Lee
--Richard Kuipers, Variety
“A simple yet effective and beautifully shot film about the importance of education and the preservation of tradition and nature.”
--Rene Sanchez, Cine Sin FRonteras
“A breath of fresh air.”
--Ang Lee
‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom’ Film Review: Small Oscar Contender Makes Big Impact
Bhutan’s first nominee tells a heart-tugging tale of a big-city teacher sent to the remotest school district on Earth
Ronda Racha Penrice | The Wrap
In a time when bigger is assumed to be better, especially in terms of budget and star power, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” scored a surprising Oscar nomination for Best International Feature, the first ever for Bhutan, a country in the Himalayas with a population of less than 800,000.
In the COVID era, however, the film’s core messaging of a simple life, where people help people and educators are worthy of honor and praise, resonates more strongly than ever. So many of us discovered the importance of these values during the pandemic, and Ugyen (Sherab Dorji), the film’s protagonist, realizes it through a crisis of his own.
When we first meet Ugyen, he is an unsatisfied teacher working in Thimphu, the nation’s capital, with dreams of escaping to Australia and becoming a singer, despite his grandmother’s insistence that being a teacher and a civil servant is a better job than anything he will find abroad. Before he can do that, his government employers send him to the remote village of Lunana, accessible only by horse and foot, to finish out his contract.
If Ugyen finds the city unsatisfying, imagine his displeasure at giving up material comforts, such as listening to music and using his phone, to live in a region without regular electricity or even indoor plumbing. Regardless of how disgruntled Ugyen feels about this transfer, the villagers are ecstatic that he is there, greeting him like a king with all they have to offer. And while “all they have” isn’t much by material standards, even he cannot resist the power of pure kindness where people give so freely of their few possessions.
In Lunana, education is so hard to come by that it is highly treasured. What he finds are students so eager to learn that they come to find him if he is late. Charged with this duty is class captain Pem Zam (her real name), whose optimism is boundless and completely untainted by the unfortunate cards she’s been dealt, including an alcoholic father. One student even tells him that Ugyen wants to be a teacher like him “because a teacher touches the future.”
The yak, Ugyen learns, is a valuable asset in Lunana, something he realizes firsthand as he grows accustomed to using the animal’s dung as fuel for stoves and heaters. At one point, he is even granted a yak of his own — Norbu, who, as the film’s title reveals, resides in the classroom. In time, Ugyen finds himself warming not just to the people but also to the culture, even recalling bits that he had forgotten from his own childhood. Where he once sang Western songs, he now embraces those of the village, particularly “Yak Lebi Lhadar,” in praise of the celebrated animal, frequently sung by the beautiful Saldon (Kelden Lhamo Gurung) on top of the mountain as an offering.
Taking it a step further, he begins to use those songs to teach his students. Ugyen’s presence is so powerful that Asha (Kunzang Wangdi), the village’s wise leader, begins to sing again, something he hadn’t done in the many years since his wife’s death. And the change in Asha suggests that Ugyen has an even more divine and powerful connection to Lunana, one that conjures up the richest folklore.
What first-time director Pawo Choyning Dorji — who attended college in the U.S. and is the son of a Bhutanese diplomat — achieves is a reminder of how cinema can connect us to what matters most in life, sharing a specific story from a part of the world most of us will never experience, but zoning in on matters of the heart that resonate in a universal way. “Lunana” is also a testament to the vitality of making cinema available to those without standard resources: The actors are all novices, with many of them never even having seen a movie before, and the production was shot on digital cameras that relied upon solar power as the area’s main energy source.
The taste of Oscar voters is often questioned, but they get it right here. “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” is more than what Ang Lee calls a “breath of fresh air”; it’s an affirmation that all films, however humble their origin, can matter and be counted.
=================================
Oscar hopeful ‘Lunana’: A yak, a classroom, and a transformative journey
By Peter Rainer | The Christian Science Monitor
Did you know that Bhutan has an official policy of pursuing “gross national happiness” for all its citizens? Or that it mandates an education for every single child? All this and more I found out from the lovely “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” an Oscar nominee for best international feature. It’s about a young schoolteacher who – reluctantly at first, and without his full awareness – discovers happiness where he never thought he’d find it.
As the film opens, Ugyen Dorji (Sherab Dorji) has one more year of teaching left in his mandatory five-year commitment to the government. But what he really wants to do is ditch the final year and immigrate to Australia, where he dreams of becoming a pop singing sensation.
Bhutan’s Ministry of Education has other ideas. It assigns him to complete his tenure in the village of Lunana, high up among the receding Himalayan glaciers, where he will preside over what is described as “the most remote school in the world.”
Sometimes happiness is elusive if only one path to it is envisioned. In the Oscar-nominated film “Lunana,” an unexpected assignment offers a teacher new vistas and a deeper understanding of his country.
The arduous weeklong trek from his residence in urban Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital, to Lunana – population 56 – convinces the callow, continually complaining Ugyen that he must find a way out. The enthusiastic greeting he receives when he finally arrives there does nothing to dissuade him. Neither the grateful village elders nor the beaming faces of his very young students have much effect on him. Not at first anyway.
The writer-director, Pawo Choyning Dorji, is quite aware that he is playing out a predictable narrative here, but he unfolds it with heartfelt simplicity. The film is, after all, a kind of fable. And it’s by no means all sweetness and light; a necessary strain of sadness wafts through this tale. How could it be otherwise? As much as Ugyen warms to his surroundings, he knows – as do the children and the villagers – that his summer-through-fall sojourn will end when he heads back before the winter storms.
In Ugyen’s new world, however temporary, electricity is at best haphazard, and the main source of kindling is dried yak dung. His classroom – which, yes, houses a yak – is initially without a blackboard and chalk. Teaching tools, left behind by his predecessor, are in scant supply. And yet, as we discover along with Ugyen, these losses are surmountable. The children are headed up by class captain Pem Zam – a 9-year-old charmer from Lunana essentially playing herself – and their hunger for learning is entirely convincing. I wish there had been more scenes of the newly enthusiastic Ugyen tending his flock, but “Lunana” demonstrates, as few films ever have, how inspired schooling can break through even the most abject obstacles.
Not that Lunana is a shantytown exactly. Shot on location, the film is graced with wide mountain vistas, draped in low-hanging clouds, that are so resplendent you can practically inhale them off the screen. The residents, played mostly by locals – many of whom, like their characters, have never traveled outside the village – literally worship their natural surroundings. When Saldon (Kelden Lhamo Gurung), a young woman and yak herder who befriends Ugyen, sings out a beatific song, it carries through the hills like a soft prayer.
Undercutting this romanticism is the belief, voiced by the adults, that, as ravishing as this world can be, it does not hold enough promise for their children. The reason teachers are revered in Lunana is because, in the words of little Pem Zam, they “touch the future.” Parents want their children to be more than Himalayan yak herders. They love them enough to part with them, perhaps forever.
Ugyen’s citified ways and penchant for Western pop culture are not regarded as threats in Lunana. They’re more like a harbinger of new possibilities for a new generation. In the end, the real challenge in this story lies with Ugyen: He realizes that however far he travels from Lunana, its melancholy wonderment will always be inside him. So will the love of its people. Their kindness transforms him.
=====================
Movie Review: An adorable Oscar underdog — “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” from Bhutan
Review by Roger Moore | Movie Nation
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan’s pursuit of “Gross National Happiness.” It’s this gloriously progressive ideal aimed at prioritizing well-being and a satisfying, even joy-filled life over international capitalism’s national scorecard — gross domestic product.
But who knew this remote, impassibly mountainous country could export that?
“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” is a sweet, understated and wistfully beautiful film about an antsy young cynic sent to teach in the most remote schoolhouse on Earth. He is ordered to Lunana to fulfill his national service. What he’d prefer is traveling to Australia to sing English language pop covers in the bars on Bondi Beach.
But what’s a self-absorbed lad to do when the entire village worshipfully welcomes him, pouring respect on a teacher, someone who “can touch the future?” What’ll he do when he sees the eager faces of the moppets who will be under his care?
If he’s like a lot of people who watch this film, Bhutan’s first-ever contender as a Best International (foreign language) Feature at this year’s Academy Awards, he might just cry.
Writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji’s debut feature starts in the city where Ugyen Dorji (Sherab Dorji) is getting a good, old-fashioned chewing-out from his government supervisor. A nation filled with yak herders and monks is a place where most folks would sacrifice everything for a government job. Ugyen would rather play his guitar and sing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” He’s waiting for his travel visa to clear so he and his girlfriend can escape to Australia.
“I have never SEEN anyone less motivated that you” his boss hisses (in Dzongkha, with English subtitles). He’s been a bust at the city schools of Thimphu. As he owes one last year of service, maybe shipping his shiftless behind to Lunana, in the literal middle of nowhere, will change his ways and help the government reopen the school there, passing “gross national happiness” on to the 56 or so souls who inhabit the place.
“I have an altitude problem!” he lies. “Are you Bhutanese? “ATTITUDE problem’ is more like it!”
After a sluggish start, “Lunana” gets on its feet and on the road. Ugyen sets off — a day by bus, seven days of hiking and complaining — just to get to the village 4,800 meters up.
He and his guide Michen (Ugyen Norbu Lhendup) pass through settlements down to their last three residents, wade streams where his market-stall bought “Gortex” waterproof boots turn out to be knockoffs, and climb through some of the most breathtaking scenery on Earth.
Michen has noticed the snow pack shrinking, even though he’s never heard the phrase “Global Warming.” Ugyen barely notices. He’s got his headphones on, listening to his jams on his phone. He may expect his cell service coverage to end, but he has no idea how hard even recharging the thing will be.
“Solar…sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
And that’s the least of his problems. The ancient stone school has no supplies. His living space for the summer and fall — he is due to leave before the snow blocks him in — is Spartan and cold, with only yak dung to burn for warmth and cooking. He meets the respectful head man (Kanzang Wangdi) and the villagers who hike for hours to escort him in, and cannot disguise his dismay or hold his tongue.
He doesn’t want to be here, and is ready to leave. Now.
But as in a thousand other “fish out of water” tales, things change, attitudes soften. The “class captain,” little Pem Zam, is too cute for words, eager to learn and awfully helpful since Ugyen no longer has a cell phone alarm to wake him in time for school.
He finds himself improvising, using charcoal on the walls since there’s no blackboard. He’s bilingual, so he teaches nursery rhymes in Dzongkha, math in English. Might he fit in? Be useful after all?
“Maybe I was a yak herder in a previous life,” he jokes to the head man. “Oh noooo. You could have been a YAK. They are so useful to our people.”
And then there’s this other singer in town, a yak herder with an angel’s voice. She’s cute, too.
Writer-director Dorji has a few stumbling steps out of the gate, with characters’ awkwardly running through paragraphs of exposition filling in Ugyen’s unhappy childhood and his inescapable fate in early scenes. But his debut feature settles down and immerses us in rituals — offering yak milk to shrines in mountain passes, not to the dead but to the spirits of the mountains — and Bhutanese life, which is simple enough to be called impoverished by much of the rest of the world.
The film invites us to imagine interior lives, a narrowing of the “pursuit of happiness” to tasks at hand, modest goals, music, food and love.
As our pandemic waxes and wanes, “Lunana” becomes one of the great cinematic escapes of recent years.
You go ahead and root for the Japanese “Drive My Car” this Oscar night. I’ve picked out an underdog to pull for, and a bucket list place to visit, “altitude problems” be damned.
Bhutan’s first nominee tells a heart-tugging tale of a big-city teacher sent to the remotest school district on Earth
Ronda Racha Penrice | The Wrap
In a time when bigger is assumed to be better, especially in terms of budget and star power, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” scored a surprising Oscar nomination for Best International Feature, the first ever for Bhutan, a country in the Himalayas with a population of less than 800,000.
In the COVID era, however, the film’s core messaging of a simple life, where people help people and educators are worthy of honor and praise, resonates more strongly than ever. So many of us discovered the importance of these values during the pandemic, and Ugyen (Sherab Dorji), the film’s protagonist, realizes it through a crisis of his own.
When we first meet Ugyen, he is an unsatisfied teacher working in Thimphu, the nation’s capital, with dreams of escaping to Australia and becoming a singer, despite his grandmother’s insistence that being a teacher and a civil servant is a better job than anything he will find abroad. Before he can do that, his government employers send him to the remote village of Lunana, accessible only by horse and foot, to finish out his contract.
If Ugyen finds the city unsatisfying, imagine his displeasure at giving up material comforts, such as listening to music and using his phone, to live in a region without regular electricity or even indoor plumbing. Regardless of how disgruntled Ugyen feels about this transfer, the villagers are ecstatic that he is there, greeting him like a king with all they have to offer. And while “all they have” isn’t much by material standards, even he cannot resist the power of pure kindness where people give so freely of their few possessions.
In Lunana, education is so hard to come by that it is highly treasured. What he finds are students so eager to learn that they come to find him if he is late. Charged with this duty is class captain Pem Zam (her real name), whose optimism is boundless and completely untainted by the unfortunate cards she’s been dealt, including an alcoholic father. One student even tells him that Ugyen wants to be a teacher like him “because a teacher touches the future.”
The yak, Ugyen learns, is a valuable asset in Lunana, something he realizes firsthand as he grows accustomed to using the animal’s dung as fuel for stoves and heaters. At one point, he is even granted a yak of his own — Norbu, who, as the film’s title reveals, resides in the classroom. In time, Ugyen finds himself warming not just to the people but also to the culture, even recalling bits that he had forgotten from his own childhood. Where he once sang Western songs, he now embraces those of the village, particularly “Yak Lebi Lhadar,” in praise of the celebrated animal, frequently sung by the beautiful Saldon (Kelden Lhamo Gurung) on top of the mountain as an offering.
Taking it a step further, he begins to use those songs to teach his students. Ugyen’s presence is so powerful that Asha (Kunzang Wangdi), the village’s wise leader, begins to sing again, something he hadn’t done in the many years since his wife’s death. And the change in Asha suggests that Ugyen has an even more divine and powerful connection to Lunana, one that conjures up the richest folklore.
What first-time director Pawo Choyning Dorji — who attended college in the U.S. and is the son of a Bhutanese diplomat — achieves is a reminder of how cinema can connect us to what matters most in life, sharing a specific story from a part of the world most of us will never experience, but zoning in on matters of the heart that resonate in a universal way. “Lunana” is also a testament to the vitality of making cinema available to those without standard resources: The actors are all novices, with many of them never even having seen a movie before, and the production was shot on digital cameras that relied upon solar power as the area’s main energy source.
The taste of Oscar voters is often questioned, but they get it right here. “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” is more than what Ang Lee calls a “breath of fresh air”; it’s an affirmation that all films, however humble their origin, can matter and be counted.
=================================
Oscar hopeful ‘Lunana’: A yak, a classroom, and a transformative journey
By Peter Rainer | The Christian Science Monitor
Did you know that Bhutan has an official policy of pursuing “gross national happiness” for all its citizens? Or that it mandates an education for every single child? All this and more I found out from the lovely “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” an Oscar nominee for best international feature. It’s about a young schoolteacher who – reluctantly at first, and without his full awareness – discovers happiness where he never thought he’d find it.
As the film opens, Ugyen Dorji (Sherab Dorji) has one more year of teaching left in his mandatory five-year commitment to the government. But what he really wants to do is ditch the final year and immigrate to Australia, where he dreams of becoming a pop singing sensation.
Bhutan’s Ministry of Education has other ideas. It assigns him to complete his tenure in the village of Lunana, high up among the receding Himalayan glaciers, where he will preside over what is described as “the most remote school in the world.”
Sometimes happiness is elusive if only one path to it is envisioned. In the Oscar-nominated film “Lunana,” an unexpected assignment offers a teacher new vistas and a deeper understanding of his country.
The arduous weeklong trek from his residence in urban Thimphu, Bhutan’s capital, to Lunana – population 56 – convinces the callow, continually complaining Ugyen that he must find a way out. The enthusiastic greeting he receives when he finally arrives there does nothing to dissuade him. Neither the grateful village elders nor the beaming faces of his very young students have much effect on him. Not at first anyway.
The writer-director, Pawo Choyning Dorji, is quite aware that he is playing out a predictable narrative here, but he unfolds it with heartfelt simplicity. The film is, after all, a kind of fable. And it’s by no means all sweetness and light; a necessary strain of sadness wafts through this tale. How could it be otherwise? As much as Ugyen warms to his surroundings, he knows – as do the children and the villagers – that his summer-through-fall sojourn will end when he heads back before the winter storms.
In Ugyen’s new world, however temporary, electricity is at best haphazard, and the main source of kindling is dried yak dung. His classroom – which, yes, houses a yak – is initially without a blackboard and chalk. Teaching tools, left behind by his predecessor, are in scant supply. And yet, as we discover along with Ugyen, these losses are surmountable. The children are headed up by class captain Pem Zam – a 9-year-old charmer from Lunana essentially playing herself – and their hunger for learning is entirely convincing. I wish there had been more scenes of the newly enthusiastic Ugyen tending his flock, but “Lunana” demonstrates, as few films ever have, how inspired schooling can break through even the most abject obstacles.
Not that Lunana is a shantytown exactly. Shot on location, the film is graced with wide mountain vistas, draped in low-hanging clouds, that are so resplendent you can practically inhale them off the screen. The residents, played mostly by locals – many of whom, like their characters, have never traveled outside the village – literally worship their natural surroundings. When Saldon (Kelden Lhamo Gurung), a young woman and yak herder who befriends Ugyen, sings out a beatific song, it carries through the hills like a soft prayer.
Undercutting this romanticism is the belief, voiced by the adults, that, as ravishing as this world can be, it does not hold enough promise for their children. The reason teachers are revered in Lunana is because, in the words of little Pem Zam, they “touch the future.” Parents want their children to be more than Himalayan yak herders. They love them enough to part with them, perhaps forever.
Ugyen’s citified ways and penchant for Western pop culture are not regarded as threats in Lunana. They’re more like a harbinger of new possibilities for a new generation. In the end, the real challenge in this story lies with Ugyen: He realizes that however far he travels from Lunana, its melancholy wonderment will always be inside him. So will the love of its people. Their kindness transforms him.
=====================
Movie Review: An adorable Oscar underdog — “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” from Bhutan
Review by Roger Moore | Movie Nation
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan’s pursuit of “Gross National Happiness.” It’s this gloriously progressive ideal aimed at prioritizing well-being and a satisfying, even joy-filled life over international capitalism’s national scorecard — gross domestic product.
But who knew this remote, impassibly mountainous country could export that?
“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” is a sweet, understated and wistfully beautiful film about an antsy young cynic sent to teach in the most remote schoolhouse on Earth. He is ordered to Lunana to fulfill his national service. What he’d prefer is traveling to Australia to sing English language pop covers in the bars on Bondi Beach.
But what’s a self-absorbed lad to do when the entire village worshipfully welcomes him, pouring respect on a teacher, someone who “can touch the future?” What’ll he do when he sees the eager faces of the moppets who will be under his care?
If he’s like a lot of people who watch this film, Bhutan’s first-ever contender as a Best International (foreign language) Feature at this year’s Academy Awards, he might just cry.
Writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji’s debut feature starts in the city where Ugyen Dorji (Sherab Dorji) is getting a good, old-fashioned chewing-out from his government supervisor. A nation filled with yak herders and monks is a place where most folks would sacrifice everything for a government job. Ugyen would rather play his guitar and sing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” He’s waiting for his travel visa to clear so he and his girlfriend can escape to Australia.
“I have never SEEN anyone less motivated that you” his boss hisses (in Dzongkha, with English subtitles). He’s been a bust at the city schools of Thimphu. As he owes one last year of service, maybe shipping his shiftless behind to Lunana, in the literal middle of nowhere, will change his ways and help the government reopen the school there, passing “gross national happiness” on to the 56 or so souls who inhabit the place.
“I have an altitude problem!” he lies. “Are you Bhutanese? “ATTITUDE problem’ is more like it!”
After a sluggish start, “Lunana” gets on its feet and on the road. Ugyen sets off — a day by bus, seven days of hiking and complaining — just to get to the village 4,800 meters up.
He and his guide Michen (Ugyen Norbu Lhendup) pass through settlements down to their last three residents, wade streams where his market-stall bought “Gortex” waterproof boots turn out to be knockoffs, and climb through some of the most breathtaking scenery on Earth.
Michen has noticed the snow pack shrinking, even though he’s never heard the phrase “Global Warming.” Ugyen barely notices. He’s got his headphones on, listening to his jams on his phone. He may expect his cell service coverage to end, but he has no idea how hard even recharging the thing will be.
“Solar…sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
And that’s the least of his problems. The ancient stone school has no supplies. His living space for the summer and fall — he is due to leave before the snow blocks him in — is Spartan and cold, with only yak dung to burn for warmth and cooking. He meets the respectful head man (Kanzang Wangdi) and the villagers who hike for hours to escort him in, and cannot disguise his dismay or hold his tongue.
He doesn’t want to be here, and is ready to leave. Now.
But as in a thousand other “fish out of water” tales, things change, attitudes soften. The “class captain,” little Pem Zam, is too cute for words, eager to learn and awfully helpful since Ugyen no longer has a cell phone alarm to wake him in time for school.
He finds himself improvising, using charcoal on the walls since there’s no blackboard. He’s bilingual, so he teaches nursery rhymes in Dzongkha, math in English. Might he fit in? Be useful after all?
“Maybe I was a yak herder in a previous life,” he jokes to the head man. “Oh noooo. You could have been a YAK. They are so useful to our people.”
And then there’s this other singer in town, a yak herder with an angel’s voice. She’s cute, too.
Writer-director Dorji has a few stumbling steps out of the gate, with characters’ awkwardly running through paragraphs of exposition filling in Ugyen’s unhappy childhood and his inescapable fate in early scenes. But his debut feature settles down and immerses us in rituals — offering yak milk to shrines in mountain passes, not to the dead but to the spirits of the mountains — and Bhutanese life, which is simple enough to be called impoverished by much of the rest of the world.
The film invites us to imagine interior lives, a narrowing of the “pursuit of happiness” to tasks at hand, modest goals, music, food and love.
As our pandemic waxes and wanes, “Lunana” becomes one of the great cinematic escapes of recent years.
You go ahead and root for the Japanese “Drive My Car” this Oscar night. I’ve picked out an underdog to pull for, and a bucket list place to visit, “altitude problems” be damned.
DISCUSSION FOLLOWS EVERY FILM!
$7.00 Members | $11.00 Non-Members
TIVOLI THEATRE
5021 Highland Avenue | Downers Grove, IL
630-968-0219 | classiccinemas.com
We apologize—Movie Pass cannot be used for AHFS programs
$7.00 Members | $11.00 Non-Members
TIVOLI THEATRE
5021 Highland Avenue | Downers Grove, IL
630-968-0219 | classiccinemas.com
We apologize—Movie Pass cannot be used for AHFS programs
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