Written by Andreas Babiolakis

The Academy likes to spotlight one international film that maybe didn’t get much festival love or other high alerts, and this year’s nominee is the Bhutanese drama Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. It took a lot to get here, considering this is — ahem — a 2019 film that made its rounds in 2020, wasn’t qualifiable for the 2021 Academy Awards for that year, but was accepted and actually landed a spot amongst the final five… three years later. It’s a bit baffling, I know, but sometimes that’s just how things go when it comes to festival circuits, international release dates, and other factors. So, why was the Academy incessant on selecting the debut film by director Pawo Choyning Dorji? Once you get your hands on Lunana (which is easier than ever now, considering it just dropped on Video on Demand and iTunes), you may see why. It’s not the most revolutionary film, but it is one that is difficult to shake off because of its tenderness and soft-spoken nature. It could have easily been a heavy-handed emotional trek that forces you to feel certain feelings, but I don’t think that’s how Pawo Choyning Dorji wishes to operate.

The easy-to-botch premise is that a singer/teacher, Ugyen, is aiming to get a visa to live in Australia: a location that is presented as the destination of dreamers here. He has one last assignment before this is feasible, but he has to make the long travel to the teensy town of the film’s namesake: Lunana, where he will teach a small class of local children. Getting there takes days, and Ugyen is advised to partake in a few rituals that seem like head-scratchers to him, as well as being forced to shed his ways of life (including the nice shoes he wears getting destroyed by the muddy pastures he must cross). He finally gets to Lunana, and we’re already half an hour or so in. We don’t just cut ahead. We’re encouraged to take part in Ugyen’s journey with him. This is also true with the townspeople of Lunana, who are actual villagers of said location. They’ve never acted or been on screen before. We get a bit of documentation of this area like it’s Pawo Choyning Dorji’s spotlighting of a part of Bhutan he wanted to share with the world. It’s this kind of authentic immersion that really sells Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. This alone makes a typical premise feel worthwhile, but there’s even more to the film’s blueprint.

If it took around a half hour for Lunana to show up, you can only imagine that it takes even longer for that titular yak to make an appearance, and you would be right. Maybe around forty minutes left, Norbu the yak shows up and resides exactly where you’d expect him (given, well, the obvious hint). Previously, the idea of a yak being in a classroom was a metaphor for Ugyen: an outsider who provides substance and utility for these inhabitants. Despite this “big” reveal after the title’s promise, even this feels like it happens just because it was meant to, not because the film had to shove a yak into a small space. That’s when it really hit me how disinterested in convention that Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom is, despite being such a common fish-out-of-water story. It’s nice to see the familiar being presented in such a bare-bones fashion again, where gorgeous shots wow us, the breezes nearby occupying our ears, and emotion isn’t shoved down our throats but travels to our souls instead. Once we descend, we see a changed man carrying all that he has learned with him, and I think Pawo Choyning Dorji wants the same for us. As Ugyen sought to teach others, he himself learned a lot. Australia is no longer the dream destination, but a dream instead: life is sometimes about the little things and not the huge desires and aspirations. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom is a sweet, earnest film that feels impossible to shun away, especially since I wouldn’t mind experiencing it again in the near future. It could be this everlasting consolation that the Academy couldn’t ignore. I get it now.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.