Kesang Tseten

In a nunnery in the high desert mountains of Mustang, Nepal, a revered abbess dies, leaving signs that she will be reborn in the precious human form. Prayers and ritual must be done to help her consciousness into its next rebirth, but the nunnery coffers are empty. The senior nuns decide that the only way out is get back money loaned out by the nunnery. A mysterious loan was made out to an equally mysterious Mr. Tashi who visited the senior nun in her last days. Given the shady rumours about Mr. Tashi, the nuns are convinced he took advantage of her in her dying state. Two nuns are assigned to retrieve the money; Karma, a free-spirited nun, and her opposite, a textbook-sort of nun called Sonam. They journey from the cloistered world of the high mountains of Nepal, to the faraway cities of sin, to find the elusive Mr. Tashi.

The Brigade of Gurkhas has been a special unit within the British army for 200 years. Boys are recruited for the unit in the mountain villages of Nepal. In Who Will Be a Gurkha, director Kesang Tseten observes how the aspiring soldiers’ physical condition, intelligence and motivation are all put to the test. Tough selection isn’t only a matter of fitness and muscle power, but also of the right mental preparation. The Gurkhas are known for their courage and fighting spirit, and they are sent to fight in areas of conflict such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nepal has rapidly become a pipeline of cheap labour for the Gulf in the last two decades. Migration has emptied Nepal’s villages of its young men, its farm fields tended by the elderly and women or left fallow. This film is about young men who set out to escape their family woes and grinding poverty, albeit at a high cost, to earn wages of US$5 to 7 a day in the alien and stultifying conditions of the Qatari desert. Theirs is often a true test of resilience and luck. The film shows a glimpse of gritty migrant conditions, rarely permitted to be filmed by the Gulf states, with its well-known sensitivity to outside criticism of its labour policies and practices. The stories of disillusionment and, occasional, transformation, capture the essence of the Nepali migrant experience, and the enormity of his journey.

Dor Bahadur Bista, Nepal’s most controversial intellectual in modern times, disappeared without a trace in 1996.

In recent years, fear of being caught in the crossfire between state security forces and Maoist insurgents and a failing economy propelled Nepalis to sell themselves as cheap labour in the Gulf. Their earnings sustain one out of every three households and remittances prop up the country, but these come at a high cost. The film provides a rare glimpse of the migrant experience in Qatar, where they outnumber natives by 3 to 1. Their struggle to endure long working hours in stultifying heat, burdened by loans and high expectations of home, and the upheaval and fractures of emotional life is overwhelming, unhinging the compass of their lives.

Things do not always work out the way they hoped they would, but events here have hit Dolma, a Nepali woman working illegally in Kuwait, particularly hard: she stands accused of murdering a Filipino colleague, and despite her protests of innocence she has been sentenced to death. This documentary presents the many reactions that this news unleashes. Dolma’s husband – who has also worked in Iraq – and other relatives can hardly believe it. Others wonder why the government is not coming to her aid. An activist who champions the interests of Nepalese women in the Gulf States explains that prohibiting women from going to work there is counter-productive. Now that the women are illegal, abuse is the order of the day. As the story progresses, attempts are made to come to a settlement with the Filipino family, Dolma’s husband also visits his son, who is being cared for in a remote mountain village.

Yudha Chitra (Frames of War) is a stark reminder that peace has not yet come for those directly affected by Nepal’s 11-year conflict. The film brings us the voices of those whose relatives were killed or disappeared or who were disabled during the conflict. Suffering and pain reside in individuals and individual bodies, which we often forget under the collective ‘people’. The film excavates individual stories while accompanying a traveling exhibition of A People War that in 2007-2008 traversed the country for more than three months and was seen by more than 300,000 people. The film also reminds us that public acknowledgement of what happened is a precondition for healing.