Highway to Dhampus

I really enjoyed this small, quiet film about life in rural Nepal. It's beautifully shot and has a great Nepali cast. It's very much a character study with Nepal itself being one of the biggest characters. The film does a great job of giving you more than a passing tourist's view of Nepal, but you don't need a deep understanding of Hindu culture to appreciate it. I liked that it asked hard questions about the real value of charity and service work, hard questions the film didn't offer an easy answer for, and it wasn't just a post-colonial "white guilt" film.

A few of the characters start off as thin caricatures, but as the film progresses, most of these characters grow along with the film. I was especially drawn to Ajit, the Nepali pilot who connects all these disparate characters, but also old Nepal and modern Nepal. The film really wants to make a stark contrast between Elizabeth, the spoiled heiress doing obligatory charity work, and Laxmi, the simple villager who runs the local orphanage, but I think the best contrast comes in the form of Ajit's personal struggle as he transitions from being a proud pilot to much more humble circumstances.