A family struggles against the conflicting dictates of nature, spirituality, politics, and free will.

12.1GB | 1h 12m | 1920×1036 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/C31A445256AA175/Balloon.2019.1080p.BluRay.DD+.7.1.x264-LHD.mkv

Language(s):Chinese, Tibetan
Subtitles:English, Chinese

The post Pema Tseden – Qi qiu AKA Balloon (2019) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

After heavy rains, puddles and mud cover the streets of the Tibetan mountain village. It’s good for the crops, but bad for young Wangdrak, the only boy in the village without rubber boots. While his father is busy with other worries, Wangdrak’s mother fulfills her son’s wish. But new shoes bring new problems. For Wangdrak, a battle against the blue sky and for the rain begins, fought alongside his loyal friend Lhamo. Nestled in the inimitable mountain landscape, director Lhapal Gyal uses vivid imagery to show us a culture steeped in ancient traditions, paying special attention to the young protagonist’s dreams.

1.36GB | 1h 30m | 1920×1012 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/BB371BDF53C50A1/Wang.Zha.de.yuxue.AKA.Wangdrak’s.Rain.Boots.2018.1080p.WEB-DL-ARN.mkv
or
https://tezfiles.com/file/3f9c3bb17cbcd/Wang.Zha.de.yuxue.AKA.Wangdrak%27s.Rain.Boots.2018.1080p.WEB-DL-ARN.mp4

Language:Tibetan
Subtitles:Chinese and English (both hardsub)

The post Lhapal Gyal – Wang Zha de yuxue AKA Wangdrak’s Rain Boots (2018) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This is a story of revenge and redemption.

On an isolated road passing through the vast barren plains of Tibet, a truck driver who has accidentally run over a sheep chances upon a young man who is hitching a ride. As they drive and chat, the truck driver notices that his new friend has a silver dagger strapped to his leg. He comes to understand that this man is out to kill someone who wronged him earlier in life. As he drops the hitchhiker off at a fork in the road, little does the truck driver realize that their short time together has changed everything, and that their destinies are inexorably intertwined.

On the path of life, sometimes we meet someone whose dreams overtake our own to the point that they converge.

5.06GB | 1h 27mn | 1920×1080 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/9815D551038365D/Jinpa.2018.1080p.AAC.2.0.h264-SaL.mkv

Language(s):Tibetan
Subtitles:English Hardsubbed

The post Pema Tseden – Zhuang si le yi zhi yang AKA Jinpa (2018) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A slow-simmering, Western-style action drama of blood feud, misfired machismo, and spiritual quest spread across Tibet’s rolling steppes and scorching deserts, “Soul on a String” follows the travails of a hunter led by fate to deliver a sacred stone to a mythic mountain despite motley foes at his heels. Chinese director Zhang Yang (“Shower,” “Sunflower”) eschews the thrill of propulsive duels for a discursive allegorical approach, serving up picturesque visuals, highland-dry humor, and karmic plot twists. While the nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time is sure to hamper theatrical release prospects, Zhang’s quirky blend of genre and art-house elements should ensure considerable fest play.

The director’s second film set in Tibet after his minimalist docudrama “Paths of the Soul” is steeped in fairy-tale color. Its prologue depicts a forest encounter between a young urchin, a deer hunter, and a young girl who falls from a cliff clutching a glowing stone. Like the metafictions of Italo Calvino and Jorges Luis Borges, the meaning of the characters’ crossed destinies will be revealed in due course, but their connections remain concealed for so long, the multi-pronged narratives fell obscure and unfocused at first.

The story proper begins with hot-headed wastrel Guori (Zerong Dages) challenging a man called Tabei to a duel to avenge his father’s death. “Many people are named Tabei,” protests his hapless target, and sure enough, Guori’s thirst for revenge doesn’t stop with the first Tabei he meets. Both his mother and older brother Kodi (Lei Chen) fear that he’s making so many new enemies that their future generations will have to pay dearly for it.

On a parallel quest is Tabei (Kimba), former hunter, ex-con and fugitive. He’s revived by a lama (Mima) after being hit by a thunderbolt and told to bring a holy stone to Palm Print Mountain as penance to cleanse his many sins, attracting an odd bunch of followers en route: Chung (Quni Ciren), who decides he’s the love of her life after a one-night stand; Pu (Yizi Danzeng), a mute scalawag with psychic powers; Gedan (Siano Dudiom Zahi), a mysterious stalker; Zandui (Solange Nima), a wanderer with a wondrously daffy dog.

Set on vast, vacant landscapes which make past and present indiscernible, the stylized film suggests Westerns in which characters struggle as much against the elements as they do other humans. Even when the men brandish broadswords, their poise and unpolished moves resemble standoffs in gunfights rather than typical Chinese martial arts duels. And yet Zhang offers a twist on generic ideas of vengeance by imbuing every fight with a spiritual dimension. The film’s abstract tone slowly gives way to a moving sense of futile longing and tragedy as it explores Tabei’s lifelong burden of having to pay for the murder committed by a father he’s never met and how that colors his attitude toward love, or Chung’s desire to bear his child.

The title refers to the leather string that holds the stone, which Tabei wears around his neck, as well as Chung’s habit of counting the days of her romance by tying knots on a leather cord, symbolizing their pilgrimage to free themselves from physical and spiritual bondage. All the protagonists need to let go of their attachments, which according to Buddhist teaching is the root of all suffering. Without straining for heavy mysticism, the epiphany in the denouement skillfully elides time while rendering cause and effect irrelevant.

The performances are uneven, dominated by Kimba and Quni Ciren’s passionately willful personalities. Other roles, except the delightfully rascally Yixi Danzeng, tend to be one-dimensional. Gender relations seem to hail from the Dark Ages when men thoughtlessly sowed their wild oats while women, useful only for their cooking and sexual services, stoically raise kids alone.

The standout of the aesthetically pleasing production is Guo Daming’s widescreen cinematography, which captures Tibet’s stunningly varied terrain of lakes, deserts and mountains with sweeping aerial shots, in dramatic tones of fiery reds and brooding umber. Zhang Jian score infuses the electric rock score with Tibet folk melodies.

2.24GB | 2 h 22 min | 852×364 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/A5ECE49737AE6C2/Soul.On.A.String.%282016%29.DVDRip.ac3.sub-eng.x264-bub.mkv

Language:Tibetan
Subtitles:English

The post Yang Zhang – Pi sheng shang de hun AKA Soul on a String (2016) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
High in the desolate, windswept mountains of Tibet lives a shepherd named Tharlo. He tends his sheep and rides his motorcycle, passing his days in familiar and traditional routines far from the city lights. But when Tharlo travels to the city for an ID card photo and meets Yangtso, a modern young hairdresser, his monastic life will forever change.

Review:
“I know who I am, isn’t that enough?” Tibetan shepherd Tharlo (Shide Nyima) asks his local police chief early in Peme Tseden’s film. He’s left his hillside flock – aside from a lamb in his satchel which he guzzles periodically on a milk bottle – in order to come to town for an ID card. But from the start, Tharlo has no idea how old he is, beyond being past 40, and already has two names. His given one, which he has heard so infrequently that he says it sounds funny and, his nickname, “Ponytail”, acquired from his look. Tseden’s film starts with this uneasiness over Tharlo’s identity, and it is only a matter of time before he strips it back further to expose alienation and loneliness.

Heading into the city to get a photo for his ID, Tharlo waits at the photographers while a couple before him have their snapshots taken against a variety of painted backdrops – including Tianamen Square and New York – in another nod to the conflict between people and the spaces they inhabit, the photographer insists they change into Western clothes to fit in with the fake US backdrop. Charged with getting his hair washed before his photo can be taken, Tharlo makes a fateful visit to the hairdressers across the street, where he meets Yangtso (Yangshik Tso), a much younger woman whose ‘true self’ we suspect but which Tharlo is blind to – a human catalyst for his crisis.

Copy picture
Tseden takes an austere approach to framing, from the crisp black and white lensing of cinematographer Lu Songye to his long, fixed camera takes, with Tharlo almost always present. Despite this, he is rarely at the centre of the frame, more often marginalised to the edges, reinforcing the sense that he doesn’t quite belong. Tharlo’s visit to the city and his life in the hills are brought into sharp contrast by a ‘second act’ in which the shepherd returns to his flock and his outsider loneliness, gulping from liquor bottles with the same fervour that his lamb approached its milk. All the while, the clock is ticking on a return visit to the city.

Tharlo’s state of confusion is emphasised by the vagaries of his memory. He can recite huge chunks of Chairman Mao by rote – the film begins with him offering a monotone litany – but is constantly forgetting everyday items. Tseden also makes the clear distinction between knowing something (or someone) and understanding. The director – who adapted the film from his own short story – litters his films with symbols, from some of the mirrors that crop up showing distorted reflections (a shop sign the wrong way round, for example) and that indicate what Tharlo sees when he looks at Yangtso might not be all it appears, to others – such as a truck wing mirror – which serve to further emphasise his isolation.

This is a slow-burn, low-key film that requires patience on the part of the viewer. Tseden is in no hurry and in no mood to rush to conclusions but his measured pace helps us to invest in Tharlo, whose confusion is conveyed with considerable skill by Nyima, a long-time comedian and theatre actor making a rare foray into film. While some of the devices used – particularly that to symbolise the full stripping away of Tharlo’s sense of self – are familiar and a bit to easily predictable for arthouse regulars, the director employs them adeptly, so that he offers new interest to a well-trodden path.

— Amber Wilkinson (EyeForFilm.co.uk)

2.19GB | 2 h 3 min | 853×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D545844DF047F4C/Tharlo.2015.DVDRip.x264.AC3-Jongl0.mkv

Language(s):Mandarin, Tibetan
Subtitles:English (hardsubs)

The post Pema Tseden – Tharlo (2015) first appeared on Cinema of the World.