Director: Pawo Choyning Dorji
Somewhere in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, a young monk sets off on his teacher's orders to track down a single antique rifle, and an American collector chasing the very same weapon crosses his path — the gentle collision at the heart of Pawo Choyning Dorji's 2023 comedy-drama The Monk and the Gun.
What is The Monk And The Gun about?
Bhutan is preparing for its first-ever democratic elections, and mock ballots are being distributed to villagers unfamiliar with the concept of voting. Against that backdrop, a Buddhist teacher sends his young disciple on a quiet errand: find and bring back a firearm, for reasons the monk himself doesn't fully understand. Meanwhile an American arrives from abroad, determined to acquire a rare antique gun before a local broker beats him to it. As the two searches edge closer together, the film widens its lens to the surrounding village, where modern campaign slogans, imported technology, and old rituals bump up against one another with quiet comic friction, and asks what a country actually gains — or risks losing — when it opens itself to the outside world.
Cast & crew
Tandin Wangchuk plays the earnest young monk with a stillness that lets the film's humor land without ever mocking him, while Deki Lhamo and Choeying Jatsho fill out the village ensemble that reacts to the coming election with everything from confusion to enthusiasm. Harry Einhorn plays the visiting American collector, an outsider whose single-minded pursuit of the rifle becomes the film's clearest stand-in for Western assumptions about progress. Director Pawo Choyning Dorji, previously known for the Oscar-nominated Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, again draws largely non-professional performers from Bhutanese communities into naturalistic, lightly comic roles.
Context & significance
The Monk and the Gun is set around Bhutan's real 2008 transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional democracy, one of the more unusual peaceful political shifts of the twenty-first century, and it was shot on location in the country's mountain villages. The film screened at the Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals before Bhutan submitted it as its official entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. Dorji, himself Bhutanese, uses the setup largely for gentle observation rather than satire, letting the comedy come from mismatched expectations rather than mockery of either side.
Where & how to watch
The Monk and the Gun streams on K-Time with a free account login, complete with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles for viewers who want either. The site's Farsi-language interface makes it easy to browse and queue up alongside the rest of K-Time's catalog for Persian-speaking audiences, with no extra steps required beyond signing up.