2017 PS Film Festival
film synopsis
In 2006, the 10-year struggle between Nepal's Maoist rebels and royalists was resolved in favor of the leftists, though not before 16,000 lives were lost. This conflict has depleted villages like the one depicted in Deepak Rauniyar's impressive sophomore drama of adult males. When the former mayor passes away, his long absent son Chandra, one of the rebels, returns to assist in funeral rites, even if these traditional ceremonies reflect just the deeply entrenched gender and caste prejudices and superstitions he has been fighting against. During the long, steep progression down to the river where the (awkwardly large) body is to be cremated, Chandra and his brother come to blows, and the funeral is halted in its tracks...
Winner of the Interfilm Award for Promoting Interreligious Dialogue at the Venice Film Festival, White Sun is the best feature to come out of Nepal in years, a trenchant, eye-catching, darkly comic parable about tradition and progress, inheritance and kinship.
"Much more than a photogenic ethnographic postcard from afar, this is a deceptively complex story of muddled allegiances and proscriptive social rules." Wendy Ide, Screen
film details
guests in attendance
Deepak Rauniyar – Director (January 7 & 8 only)
Dayahang Rai – Actor (January 7 & 8 only)
Rabindra Singh Baniya – Actor (January 7 & 8 only)