Nepalese directors
From the beginning of the 2000s, a revival of Nepalese cinema can be noticed with, for example, Mukundo: Mask of Desire (2000) directed by Tsering Rhitar. The setting of the film takes place in the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, where we follow Dipak and Saraswati, a modest Nepalese couple going to meet a spiritual healer, following the death of their son. Nepal submits the work for nomination for Best Foreign Film at the 73rd Academy Awards ceremony but unfortunately it is not selected. In 2012, Nepalese filmmaker Deepak Rauniyar directs the anthropological film Highway, selected and screened at the Berlin Film Festival the same year. Two years later, it was the young Nischal Basnet who proposed his work Talakjung vs Tulke as the Nepalese entry for the Oscars in 2014. In 2015, we notice the film Kalo Pothi, which takes its title from an eponymous village in Nepal. In the form of a fable, this film directed by Min Bahadur Bham subtly exposes the critical situation of Nepal in the midst of a civil war (1996-2006). In 2016, Deepak Rauniyar returns with Seto Surya(White Sun), a biographical film about the conflict in Nepal's civil war between the Royalists and the Maoists. The work had its world premiere at the Venice Mostra in the Horizon section
Internationally
The aesthetics of the country and its history attracted many foreign directors as early as 1934. In fact, British filmmakers Geofrey Barkas and Ivor Montagu directed the short documentary Wings Over Everest, which won the prize for best short fiction film at the 8th Oscar ceremony in the short story section. Twenty years later, another Briton, George Lowe, took Everest as the subject of a documentary in The Conquest of Everest (1953). The film received an Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary category and won the same award at the British Academy Film Award in 1954. Also in the documentary category are Baraka (1992) by American Ron Fricke and The Day my God Died (2002, co-produced by actress Winony Ryder) about human trafficking and sexual slavery in Nepal and India. More recently, Nepal, to each his own voice by Austrians Andrea Leichtfried and Simon Spädkte, released in 2019. On the fiction side, we find the famous Little Buddha by Bernardo Bertolucci, filmed in Bhaktapur and the Gokarna Reserve in 1993. The year 1999 was marked by the Franco-Nepalese film Himalaya, the childhood of a chief, nominated for two Oscars. Inspired by a historical novel, Éric Valli directs this film in the Upper Dolpo region. Other films include the Indian film Drapchi (2012) by Arvind Iyer, L'Ascension (2017) by French director Ludovic Bernard and the blockbuster Doctor Strange (2016, Scott Derrickson), which begins shooting in the Kathmandu Valley. One can see in particular the temple of Pashupatinath, the Stūpa of Swayambhunath (Buddhist site) and the city of Patan
