News

A little over a year after making a worldwide deal for Tenzing, a new film based on the true story of sherpa Tenzing Norgay and his 1953 summiting of Mount Everest, Apple has found its lead in Genden Phuntsok (Jinpa), who will play the title role.

The news comes days after Apple’s announcement that BAFTA nominee Ruth Madeley will lead its disability rights drama Being Heumann, based on the bestselling memoir by Judy Heumann, from Coda Oscar winner Siân Heder. Production is currently underway, and you can check out a first-look still of Phuntsok above.

As previously announced, Tom Hiddleston co-stars in Tenzing as New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary, with Willem Dafoe set to portray English expedition leader, Colonel John Hunt, and Caitríona Balfe on board for the role of Jill Henderson, a friend of Tenzing who helped organize trips up Mount Everest. Thinley Lhamo (Shambhala) will round out the cast as Tenzing’s wife,...

Little delights abound in “Shambhala,” Min Bahadur Bham’s Berlinale competition entry, in which a vibrant young Nepali woman, Pema (Thinley Lhamo), enters into a polyandrous marriage with her lover, Tashi (Tenzin Dalha), and his two younger brothers. Bham’s tale, a physical and spiritual journey, is catalyzed by Tashi’s disappearance and Pema’s subsequent search to find him. However, at two-and-a-half hours in length, the film’s meticulous unfurling ends up spread across alternating peaks and valleys of interest and emotional allure, rendering its careful compositions only semi-affecting.

Bham paints Pema’s rural Himalayan village with whimsical brush strokes, framing the rural perspectives and traditions with a sense of mischievous intimacy. Pema’s parents joke about her marrying three brothers — a nominal arrangement, since she’s in love with one of them — and they hope, against local expectations, that she’ll be treated well. However, they don’t seem to really worry,...

The main title card for Shambhala, the new drama from Nepalese director Min Bahadur Bham (The Black Hen), appears about an hour into the movie. That’s more or less the same time it takes for the story to truly come alive, in a languishing 150-minute narrative that could prove a real patience-tester for many viewers.

And yet, this exquisitely crafted second feature does provide a certain payoff for those willing to accept its leisurely, Zen-like pacing — beginning with some of the more breathtaking scenery recently captured on screen.

At once intimate and epic, and often more ethnographic than dramatic, Shambhala takes us to the Himalayas to follow a young bride, Pema (Thinely Lhamo), whose husband, Tashi (Tenzin Dalha), leaves her behind for several months and then winds up disappearing altogether. The hitch is that Tashi is actually one of three husbands in a polyandrous marriage that also includes his...