(Film 2023, director Nabin Subba)
Saw this film in a tiny, welcoming local cinema yesterday. And went out into the clear night afterwards pondering on lives under different skies.
Set in East Nepal, it’s story of a close family searching for ways to make a living after their livelihood is threatened by the influx of cheap goods, replacing traditional woven bamboo matting made by dad Maila. This after a new road links them to nearby towns.
Seven-year-old Bindre is kept on track in attending school and keeping up with his homework by mum Maili, when he’d rather be stuffing pages into one of his socks to make an impromptu football.
For adults, like a cloud in the otherwise brilliant skies is the lure of jobs abroad, and the aftermath of a nation which has overthrown its monarchy but is menaced by powerful neighbours.
Though coveting his schoolmate's model car, Bindre is resourceful in creating toys out of items to hand; a windmill and a pair of spectacles. And he's good at inveigling dad into promising scarce cash for Coca-Cola (the baleful presence of ethics-free Western brands is evident). The increasing desperation of this close-knit family is observed, as is their tenacity in the face of local power relationships and authority corruption.
Bindre now yearns for a TV, glimpsed at a neighbour’s, but begins to understand how far-off is the possibility of getting one, towards the devastating ending.