The 32nd annual Philadelphia Film Festival runs October 19-29, 2023 and features over 80 feature films (and numerous shorts!) from over 25 countries. Most films play twice and our own Justin Nordell will be sharing “Philly Film Fest Fast Reviews” to give you a taste of the festival so you can pick and choose which films to make for the second screenings!
Very few directors have the distinction of having their very first film be nominated for an Academy Award let alone make Oscar history, yet that’s exactly what Pawo Choyning Dorji achieved with his debut feature Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom – the first film ever nominated from the country of Bhutan. While it didn’t win the Best International Feature Oscar (that went to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car – his new feature Evil Does Not Exist is also playing the festival), Dorji’s film announced the arrival of an exciting new voice from a country who had only gotten internet and television less than fifteen years ago! Dorji’s new film, The Monk and the Gun, solidifies that his immediate success was not just a fluke, as he has somehow managed to craft a film more charming, funny, and representative of his native Bhutan than his first.
Set against the backdrop of the Bhutanese government preparing the country for its first ever democratic election in 2008, The Monk and the Gun follows a titular monk as he seeks out the titular gun for… an unknown reason. What on earth could a monk need a gun for? Well, his Lama (a Buddhist teacher – think Dalai Lama but slightly less enlightened) asked for one by the next full moon and he must oblige. Seeking out a weapon in rural Bhutan, the monk travels to a nearby village where he sees a gun for the first time… it just happens to be on a television (which he is also seeing for the first time). The gun belongs to Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Quantum of Solace and our monk is immediately taken with this hero and how he uses his guns for good.
Continuing his search, our monk finally meets a man who indeed has a gun and freely gives it to him because it has been requested by the Lama. The only problem is, the gun is actually a priceless artifact from the American Civil War brought to Bhutan centuries earlier and passed down in his family for generations… and it just so happens that the gun was already promised to an American collector who paid tens of thousands of dollars for it the day before.
Now our monk is being pursued by an American gun dealer and his guide who in turn are being pursued by the Bhutanese police having gotten tipped off by an American arms dealer in their country. Will the monk successfully deliver the gun to the Lama in time? And WHY ON EARTH DOES A BUDDHIST LAMA NEED A GUN!?
An immense crowd pleaser that elicited belly laughs from most of the audience at its Philly premiere, The Monk and the Gun not only gives us a glimpse at an important turning point in Bhutanese history, but exists as a reminder than our histories and traditions are part of what make us who we are. Charming, engaging, laugh out loud funny, and above all else stunningly shot on location in Bhutan, this is a film that deserves to be seen on a big screen. An absolute delight.
In Dzongkha and English with English subtitles.
Grade: A-
Catch it at PFF23: Sunday, October 22nd at 10:15am at the PFS East. Tickets Available Here.
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