LUNANA: A YAK IN THE CLASSROOM (2020): Lunana’s Oscar Nomination is a Cultural Landmark for Bhutan

Bhutan Receives Second-Ever Oscar Nomination

Pawo Choyning Dorji’s directorial debut Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2020) has been nominated in the international feature race at the 2020 Academy Awards, making it the second-ever nomination a Bhutanese film has received.

Bhutan is a small landlocked country in the Himalayas sandwiched between China and India without many cultural exports to the rest of the world, so this nomination is a big deal for them in making their mark on the world stage. Lunana which was released in the U.S. on January tenth was filmed on solar-charged batteries, on location at one of the most remote schools in the world deep in the Himalayas.

Lunana follows the journey Ugyen, a teacher who is sent to Lunana in the northern part of the country for his last year of on the job training. The extreme altitude and the lack of technology make Ugyen want to leave the moment he arrives. The local children try to make him feel at home with a warm welcome, but they have to hurry, as the harsh winter will soon arrive.

Choyning Dorji commented, “Bhutan is a small mountainous country, with only a few commercial cinemas in the city with all the screenings sold out. We had people travel all the way from remote parts of the country, some journeying three days to come and watch the movie … On our last day of screening we had just so many people wanting to get in that we had put foldable chairs out in the aisles!”. Choyning Dorji said he “had plans to screen [the movie] longer but had to cut it short because of COVID-19 restrictions.”

Further commenting on the first academy award entry from Bhutan, Khyentse Norbu’s 1999 Tibetan language drama The Cup, Choyning Dorji said, “he is a Buddhist Lama, and he is my spiritual teacher but also the person who first introduced me to film making.”

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