A gentle, humane and beautifully photographed movie from Nepalese director Min Bahadur Bham, whose short film The Flute and then this debut feature were hits at the Venice film festival. It is set during the Nepalese civil war of 1996-2006. Two village boys try to recover their hen, which had been sold without their knowledge to an old man (called Tenzing – a name with great resonance for the British and for climbers of any nationality). Eventually they steal it back and try painting it black to disguise it. And all this happens while fanatical Maoist guerrillas make incursions, kidnapping villagers. Scenes of bucolic calm are interspersed with brutality and violence. There is an all-but-unwatchable moment when the boys smear blood over their faces and pretend to be dead bodies so that the communists will not kill them. This is an engaging movie and a valuable debut, notable for disturbing and unexpected dream sequences, tapping into the boys’ deepest fears – sequences that reminded me of Buñuel’s Los Olvidados.
