Manager: Pawo Choyning Dorji
Distribution: Sherab Dorji, Pem Zam, Gurung Ugyen, Tshering Dorji
Year: 2023
Premiere: August 2, 2024
Punctuation: ★★★
If the first film from Bhutan to travel the world was Pawo Choyning Dorji’s debut film ‘Lunana: a yak in school’ (2019), the second to do so is also the director’s second film and the first film the country has made in five years. The film is set in 2006, during Bhutan’s transition from monarchy to democracy, to consider how a remote town faces the changes that this process brings (the advent of television, the internet, mobile phones, electoral processes). Just as the proliferation of antennas spoils the dazzling view, it reflects how greed, jealousy and the resulting competition spoil coexistence..
https://www.elperiodico.com/es/ocio-y-cultura/20240801/critica-pelicula-el-monje-y-el-rifle-butan-pawo-choyning-dorji-106407091
Dorji, meanwhile, cleverly appropriates the archetypes of the ‘western’ to satirise US interventionism and its obsession with firearms; if this is what democracy has brought to the West, one wonders: why is it needed in Bhutan? In any case, despite its good hand with irony, ‘The Monk and the Gun’ prefers to be light and friendly rather than bare its claws, and it chooses to walk slowly between the characters and the plot, without getting too caught up in one or the other. not without a certain cynicism, but to serve. Showcase of Bhutanese traditions and natural beauty For Western audiences who can’t understand why anyone would question the benefits of having the right to vote.