FROM BHUTAN, NEPAL and GERMANY

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Sangay is a high-school student from Bhutan’s Phobjikha valley, riddled with angst and anxiety. She doesn’t quite feel like herself at home with her controlling, widowed father, whose life is centered around the cultural tradition of Atsara—a sacred/profane character of the Bhutanese festivals. Atsara’s totem is an erect penis, so Ap Atsara spends his time carving intricate phalli for ritual use all over town,—the reason Sangay is bullied at school. As the girl tries to find agency in her own life by dating an older, lower-caste married butcher Passa, she still can’t escape the trappings of patriarchy around her. Suddenly, Sangay starts to disassociate and lost between her hallucinations and the horrible memories that rise to the surface.

WHO MADE IT: Tashi Gyeltshen is a self-taught Bhutanese filmmaker, who has staked his claim as one of the country’s most promising new directors. Before making his feature debut with “The Red Phallus,” Gyeltshen wrote and directed two shorts that are thematically adjacent, connected by the theme of the color red and one that isn’t. Not a stranger to the festival attention, as he had already enjoyed a premiere at Rotterdam, with “The Red Phallus,” Gyeltshen traveled the festival circuit from Berlinale to Busan. The film’s DOP Jigme Tenzing, who works in Bhutanese and Indian cinema alike, and is responsible for the photography in another beautiful recent Bhutanese film, “Honeygiver among the Dogs, “was able to create a veritable dreamscape of the valley’s rolling hills. Meanwhile, the Indian sound designer Niraj Gera, along with prominent Bhutanese folk musician Jigme Drupka and American cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, known for her work with Warner Herzog, created the film’s ethereal score. The actors are all non-professionals. In Bhutan, performing in a film, even if it’s fictional, is a dangerous task, as culturally, it’s not a given to separate the person’s acting from their real life. However, Tshering Euden, who plays Sangay, dared to try out for the role and revealed herself as an actor of immense emotional power.

WHY DO WE CARE: Bhutan is often discussed in the West as the country where they measure “gross national happiness,” and “The Red Phallus” is a rather compelling juxtaposition to this aspirational enlightenment. It’s a subversion of the happiness assessment because Gyeltshen’s film dives deeper into the split between performative rituals and the way humans do behave. The sadness and emptiness of life lurk behind the stunningly beautiful backdrop of inland Bhutan’s lusty nature, and the exaggerated features in the carved mask of the prankster Atsara hide cruelty and suffering behind them. “The Red Phallus” is a film of limited dialogues, with languid, brooding scenes, which could otherwise seem too long. And yet, its atmosphere is so taut with emotion, it all comes together quite masterfully and allows the bursts of dialogue to offer enough insight. For instance, when Ap Atsara and Passa have a standoff about Sangay’s wellbeing, which essentially is a competition to see who better deserves to have control over it, the social and class distinctions of the Bhutanese society emerge in the men’s bickering. In its quieter moments, the narrative is carried by Sangay’s teenage pouting, which is slowly revealed to be a woman’s justified seething, and the contrast allows for the tonal spectrum of the film to frame the plot marvelously.