30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Italian premiere

A film crew walks to a remote village in the mountains of western Nepal. The directors, Bibhusan Basnet and Pooja Gurung, are looking for actors for their latest film: something has brought them there, on the top of a plateau where time seems to have stopped. The gazes of the inhabitants approach the lens, at once curious and elusive, while the houses, fields, and children seem immersed in a singular cinematic dimension, as if they were the scenography of an Akira Kurosawa film. When the two directors find the film's protagonist in a child who appears to have supernatural powers, the village shaman opposes their choice. Shot on film and in black and white, the short film relies on the off-screen voice of a sound diary that guides the viewer in a material and dreamlike panorama, divided between the concreteness of the earth and the transcendence of ancient popular beliefs.

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  Pooja Gurung

  Pooja Gurung has worked for six years in Kathmandu with Bibhusan Basnet. Their first short film, The Contagious Apparitions of Dambarey Dendrite (2013), was chosen by many important international festivals, from  Abu Dhabi to Venice, and won a prize at the Asian festival for short film Alpavirama. Dadyaa (2016) is their second short, and they are currently working on the feature film The Whole-Timers, with support from the Cinéfondation in Cannes.
  

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  Bibhusan Basnet

  Bibhusan Basnet is a Nepalese singer-songwriter, actor and director. After writing screenplays and composing music for films and shorts, he made his directorial debut with Pooja Gurung, with whom he shares a long artistic career. Their first short film The Contagious Apparitions Of Dambarey Dendrite (2013) was screened at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival and the Tampere Film Festival. After co-directing The Big Headed Boy, Shamans and Samurais (2020) he is working on the making of The Whole Timers, his first feature film.