Filmed in a remote Bhutan village, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom captures a way of life that is rapidly vanishing. Its Oscar-nominated director talks about growing up in a country where prosperity is measured by happiness, not GDP
t took eight days for Pawo Choyning Dorji to trek up to the location of his debut film, a settlement of 56 people so high in the Himalayas that it had no communication with the world below. Everything his 35-strong crew might need for the shoot had to be hauled up by mule, with solar batteries for power because there was no electricity. The villagers he was enlisting to take part had never seen a lightbulb. “They’d never even seen sliced bread,” he says, “and had no idea how to eat it.
But the absence of modern communications had not meant the community was unaffected by the outside world. The scenery is breathtaking but the glaciers are melting and the lakes are drying up. The snow lion is losing her home – and when she is gone, she will never return. This is what the villagers tell Ugyen, a wannabe musician played by Sherab Dorji who reluctantly arrives to teach their six school-age children for the few months before winter sets in.
The downside is that it is so small and poor – its population was measured at 777,000 in 2021 – that many young people want to leave. This is true of both Ugyen and the actor who plays him. “The film industry is very, very small in Bhutan,” says director Dorji, speaking via Zoom from Taiwan, where he spends part of the year with his Taiwanese wife and two children. “We are lucky if we produce anything on an international level every three or four years.
The film is also partly about language. Dorji recalls hanging around wood-burning stoves as a child, waiting for adults to start telling stories as they cooked. “Storytelling forms such an important part of our culture,” says the 39-year-old, “that there is no word for ‘story’. It cannot be expressed. For example, in English, I might say, ‘Claire, tell me a story.’ In my language, Dzongkha, I have to say, ‘Claire, please untie a knot for me.