'The Monk and the Gun' is a celebration of innocence: Bhutanese filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji

New Delhi, Aug 28 (PTI) Bhutanese filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji, who spent his formative years in India as the child of a diplomat, believes that looking at his country from a distance gave him a better perspective about its culture which he now wants to share with the world through his films. In his new film, "The Monk and the Gun", which was Bhutan's official entry to the Oscars in 2023, Dorji captures an important chapter in Bhutan's recent history.

The movie, currently streaming on MUBI India, is set in 2006 when King Jigme Singye Wangchuck introduced democratic elections and held a mock exercise to train people.

"In Bhutan, we have a saying that you will never see your eyelashes because they are so close. But when I came to Bhutan during my holidays, I could see my eyelashes because I wasn't really so close to it. And those scenes, observed as a little young boy, I've tried to capture in the film," Dorji told PTI in an interview.

"The Monk and the Gun" is set in the town of Ura where an old Lama instructs a young monk to procure a gun ahead of the mock elections between with parties named after a colour. The young monk eventually crosses paths with an American gun collector, who is in the country in search of an antique rifle.

Now why would a Lama need a gun? The film answers this question while introducing viewers to Bhutan's uniqueness.

"I tell people that this film is really about innocence. As I noticed my country and culture go through this phase of modernisation, that innocence was lost. If you have been to Bhutan, you will notice that we are a culture that celebrates this quality of innocence.

"As we were becoming a modern country, we were told that sometimes innocence is ignorance. But with this film, I wanted to remind the audience that, 'Hey, sometimes it's okay to be innocent and that's not ignorance'." The idea of the film started taking shape when Dorji found himself stuck in his country during the global pandemic.

"At that time, I went to the forest of central Bhutan and built a stupa. There were all these toy guns in the foundation of the stupa. So I asked the Lama, 'Why are we burying guns?' And he told me the story of why. I was like, 'I need to make this into a film.'" Slowly, a script started to emerge about Bhutan's transformative phase.

The director said Bhutan is the only country in the world where democracy was introduced without a war or a revolution, which was different from the narrative he encountered as a young political science student in the US.

"I was kind of being fed this jargon that, 'Oh, you know, democracy is the gift given by the modern world to all these civilizations that don't have it'.

"And as a political science student, I found it to be a beautiful comedy that after all that, the people in Bhutan still voted for the Yellow party," he said, describing the result of the mock elections where people voted for the preservation of tradition and culture instead industrial development, represented by the Red Party. The period in Dorji's film captures not just what people were thinking when the mock election was introduced but also how they were getting to know about the outside world through television.

"I always tell the Americans, 'All of you remember where you were when the moon landing happened. For Bhutan, it was not the moon landing, it was our television being switched on for the first time'... I noticed that when the TV started coming, everyone started gathering around. And in villages, usually the people with the biggest TVs became the most popular households. And every time, outside the house would be all these shoes lined up because everyone is glued to the TV." Dorji spent many years in India -- in Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh. He is happy that the film can now reach the audiences in India.

"A lot of my formative years where I discovered who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do with my life were in India. I'm grateful that finally this film has a home in India. It has the most passionate audience," he said.

  "The Monk and the Gun" won the Audience Choice Award at MAMI in Mumbai and his other film "Lunana: The Yak in The Classroom" is the only Oscar-nominated Bhutanese film.

Dorji said he is lucky that his films resonate beyond Bhutan. "When my film 'Yak in the Classroom' was nominated at the Oscars, I met all these Hollywood people and I told them that you are watching a film that is unlike any other you've seen. It's about people in skirts and it's in a language you have never heard. But therein lies the beauty of art that even though it is so culturally diverse in humanity, there is so much that makes us all similar." Before he was a filmmaker, Dorji spent years as a photographer but he likes to introduce himself as a storyteller, a word that does not even exist in his culture, he said.

"In Bhutan, there is no word for a storyteller. There is no word for storytelling. If I want you to tell me a story in my culture, I will say 'Please untie a knot for me' because the purpose of telling a story is that -- is to untie, to liberate and to free. And that is what all stories are meant to do." PTI BK SMR BK BK