Bhutan, the movie

Bhutan भुठान starts with Bishnu Bahadur KC played by Hari Bansha Acharya on a call, requesting to speak to the visa officer. By this point, he had applied for a visa to Bhutan 10 times, but was denied each time.

KC was a national football player in Bhutan in 1988 before he and other Nepali-speaking Lhotsampa people were forced out of the country in the 1990s as part of the Druk regime’s ‘One Nation One People’ campaign.

Over 100,000 Bhutanese Nepalis were forced out, driven across India and dumped in Nepal where they lived in seven refugee camps supervised by the United Nations and other charities until they were resettled in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and some European countries starting in 2007.

In the fictional movie with the satirical English title The World’s Happiest Man, KC has resettled in the state of Ohio in the US but wishes to visit his home country once before he dies. Between flashbacks, we learn KC has died without having fulfilled his wish.  

The drama then focuses on KC’s two families from two wives as they debate whether to cremate him as per Hindu rites or give him a Christian burial. A mediator played by Hollywood actor Bruce Dern urges them to take a firm decision before it is too long.

There are drawn out scenes of KC being baptised and when he is confronted by his first wife from Darjeeling played by Anuradha Majumdar, he says he changed his religion in the hope that he will be allowed back in Bhutan. 

After resettling in Ohio, he remarried a Christian Nepali played by Puja Chand. Dayahang Rai as the younger son doesn’t have much screen time to flex his acting chops.  

Acharya competently portrays a man that is equal parts haunted by the memories of and longing for his home country. KC’s pain and loss is acute when he is teaching football to Gungun but between mid-scene, he freezes, perhaps lost in memories of being in Bhutan’s national team.  

In another scene, KC recalls his mother singing a lullaby in Dzongkha. He also has a box filled with medals, photographs and a football which he deflates with a knife in a powerful depiction of his complicated emotions about his homeland.

KC keeps checking his mailbox in the hopes that his visa application has been accepted. He says in Nepali: “If a tree that has already struck roots in one place is shifted to another, it will not survive.”

Dern’s character says that the western world has become “lonely in pursuit of happiness”, another reference to Bhutan’s obsession with its Gross National Happiness index.

Scenes shift quickly throughout making the story difficult to follow at times. The use of symbolism is a trite overdone. Nonetheless, भुठान is a nuanced depiction of raw pain and agony of losing one’s homeland.

But one cannot help but leave the theatre feeling deflated. KC dies without having visited Bhutan, but perhaps he does in his afterlife. It is up to the audience to create its own ending to this sad story of exile.

भुठान

Mad Monkey Films, 2025

Directed by Binod Paudel

102 minutes

In cinemas in Nepal