A winding, tangled parable about modern life coming to a people that don’t understand why they can’t keep doing things the way that’s always worked for them, “The Monk and the Gun” starts with a crazy premise and quietly gets sillier and wilder. But Dorji never loses his light touch, even as you can’t help but wonder what the lama has in mind with those guns.
Set in 2006, the Kingdom of Bhutan is looking to become a democracy, so looking to hold an election, government officials organize a mock election as a training exercise. In the town of Ura, an old lama orders a monk to get a pair of weapons to face the imminent change in the kingdom.