Min Bahadur Bham’s cinematic quest

There was controlled chaos at the Chhaya Centre on 8 September before the premiere of Shambhala, which has made history as the first South Asian film to be selected for the 2023 Berlinale in-competition lineup in three decades.

Director Min Bahadur Bham ran around, dreadlocks flailing, to test the DCP in the projection room and welcome an all-star lineup of guests. Even so, he found time to sit down with us for an interview in a quiet corner in the lobby.

Despite visible signs of stress, Bham’s passion for his craft shines through. The premiere was the culmination of years of work, but as Bham tells it, the true essence of filmmaking is the journey itself.

Min Bahadur Bham, 40, was born in isolated Mugu. As a boy he already knew he wanted to be a film director after his photographer and journalist father bought a cinema hall in his hometown. 

While watching Bollywood movies there, his friends all wanted to be actors and would imitate the mannerisms of their favourite stars. But Bham craved something more. 

“Even back then, I wondered who tells the actors what to do. There must be someone guiding and coordinating their performance,” he says. “I didn’t know at the time that it was done by a director, but I instinctively felt that was the person I wanted to be.” 

Read also: A director from Kathmandu, Sewa Bhattarai

This early fascination set Bham on a journey that would take him far, far away from Mugu. In Grade 8 he was already saving money for film school, and by Grade 10 he had run away from home. He started in theatre in Kathmandu, learning acting, lighting, set design, and costume.

This theatre background proved to be formative and influenced his later approach to cinema. “If I had to choose, I’d still give more points to theatre,” he tells us. “It’s a pure art form, it has a poetic and an artistic sense to it, requiring discipline and hard work, unlike the finances and glamour of cinema.”

Beyond filmmaking, Bham developed a deep interest in spirituality. “Creating art is a form of meditation,” Bham says, his eyes shimmering with intensity. “Filmmaking, like meditation, requires pouring all of yourself into it.”

His debut feature, Kalo Pothi (The Black Hen) premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2015, earning critical acclaim for its nuanced portrayal of two boys caught in the crossfire of Nepal’s Maoist insurgency. The film’s success, however, left Bham ambivalent. 

“I felt burdened by the success," he confides. “Looking back, I’m critical about its lack of cinematic language: it felt more like a film essay.” 

Read more: Narrating Nepal, Smriti Basnet

Kalo Pothi was a personal story of Bham’s own memories when his friends in school were joining the Maoists, and he heard of the disappearances. A recurring theme in both Kalo Pothi and Shambhala is childhood.

“All the characters in my films are reflections of myself,” Bham confesses. “Of course, they’re manipulated for the sake of the narrative, but their essence is drawn from my own childhood when I was very fragile and introverted.”

As a boy, instead of playing with children his age, Bham preferred hanging out with older people, listening to their stories: “I missed out on a normal childhood, but had a wonderful one nonetheless.”

These early experiences, the memories and nostalgia, became invaluable storytelling tools for cinema, and his PhD in anthropology was an asset as well. “As a filmmaker, it’s essential to grasp the nuances of human behaviour, culture, and politics,” he explains. 

Before Kalo Pothi, Bham wanted to study political science to get a  deeper, holistic understanding of what was happening in Nepali society at the time. 

But it is with Shambhala that Bham truly comes into his own as a director. "Kalo Pothi was my love letter to my society, and Shambhala is a love letter to my existence,” he says. 

Shambhala benefits from Bham’s own spiritual journey. He started meditating at age 12, becoming a more serious practitioner by 15. “Through meditation, I began having vivid recurring dreams of a past life as a lama in a monastery in Dolpo,” he says. 

Read also: Daughter of Chomolungma, Pinki Sris Rana

He travelled to Dolpo, where the terrain and people matched the dreamscape of the places from his meditation. “It was a surreal moment,” he says. “That’s when I realised I had to make Shambhala, to explore the subconscious and discover what I didn’t know.”

When the film was selected for the Berlinale, Bham admits he was not very excited, perhaps because he was confident it was going to go places. In Berlin he did not attend any parties, cancelling all interviews and official meetings. 

“I wanted to be at peace and simply observe. I didn’t want to get caught up in the networking or the festivities,” he recalls.

Though polyandry is a central element of Shambhala, Bham says it only serves as a backdrop to an inner quest into the meaning of existence, femininity and reincarnation.

“Dolpo offers such incredible landscape that you can point the camera at anything and it will be stunning,” he says. “But it was not a love story, so I used the mountains as characters themselves.”

Read also: Streaming the Himalaya on film, Pinki Sris Rana

The film’s protagonist is Pema (played by Thinley Lhamo for which she won the Boccalino d’Oro Prize for Best Acting Performance at Locarno last month) whose power and freedom challenge patriarchal norms. 

“Pema’s character is a reflection of inner strength and independence, transcending gender,” Bham explains. “As a male director, I also wanted to explore my feminine side to understand it more deeply.” 

Read also: From femininity to masculinity, Bernardo Michael and George Varughese

He adds that, in Shambhala the male characters reflect aspects of himself, while Pema represents his feminine side: “Developing the characters, I made sure the male side did not overshadow the feminine side in me.”

Bham is researching ideas for his next film which might, for a change, be set in Kathmandu or Angkor Wat to discover his artistic sensibility, irrespective of locale. 

More than a geographical journey, Min Bahadur Bham is on an artistic voyage deep into his inner being to find the meaning of existence itself.  

Shambhala is set to release on 13 September in cinemas with Nepali and English subtitles.