“Indians will relate to the spiritual aspect of The Monk and The Gun,” says writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji

At the recently concluded Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023, IMDb sponsored the Audience Choice Award, which went to the Bhutanese film The Monk and The Gun, as determined by festival attendees. This event also marked the first-ever original photo and video studio by IMDb in India, expanding their on-the-ground presence at festivals around the world.

Pawo Choyning Dorji, director and writer of The Monk and The Gun recently appeared on the IMDb exclusive segment ‘On The Scene,’ where he spoke about how the global audiences relate to the film and the challenges he faced while writing this sensitive story.

While summarizing his film for a global audience, Pawo said, “The Monk and The Gun is a celebration of the quality of innocence. A lot of the audiences when viewing the film get the feeling that it is a story of innocence which is synonymous with Bhutanese culture. It is a very foundational quality of our tradition and culture. When we as a country and as a culture opened up to the outside world overnight, television, democracy, internet, all came at the same time. As we embraced that, we are suddenly told by the modern world, by the western world that being innocent is being ignorant. With this film I wanted to show that there is a difference between innocence and ignorance.”

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Sharing his thoughts on what global audiences are connecting with the most with the film, Pawo mentioned, “When I speak with people about the films I make, what I always say is that I can take something that is very exotic, like Bhutanese stories, and I can tell it with the experience that I’ve had growing up in different cultures and share the story through a medium through which it becomes relatable to the rest of the world. For example, ‘The Monk and The Gun’, it is very interesting because I have traveled with this film. American audiences seem to connect with the political aspects of the story. When the film goes to a country like Korea, they relate to the cultural aspect of the story. When it comes to India, you could see that Indians connect with the film in their own way. The spiritual aspect maybe, with the innocence aspect of it. When the film screened in Bhutan, a lot of the audience were crying because it was a reminder for them of what we went through and they could relate to the impact on change on society, on family, on how the king willingly gave up his power. A lot of people got very emotional and that’s the magic of cinema, you know. It can connect with the audiences in such different ways.”

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Speaking on the challenges he faced while writing a satire about the changing political landscape of Bhutan, Pawo revealed, “One challenge while making a film that is a satire about politics and about democracy is that you can almost fall into the category of taking a stand. I am not saying that democracy is good or bad or that monarchy is better, I am trying to say that this is what happened in my country. This is what I witnessed and wanted to share that with the rest of the world. I was very careful about that. The script went through many revisions. I really wanted to smoothen out the edges.”