Tashi Gyeltshen

THE RED PHALLUS

Buthan, Germany, Nepal, 2019, 85′

In a remote valley of Bhutan, the teenager Sangay lives with her father, a traditional craftsman of wooden phalluses. She isn’t happy with her life, opposing her dad and everybody at school. She feels trapped in the middle of the emptiness of the valley and surrounded by people who live by their beliefs and symbols. Up to the day her father discovers that she is seeing a married man, from the lowest cast of the village: the butcher.

Tashi Gyeltshen
Started as a journalist for Bhutan’s national newspaper Kuensel and later as an editor of a private newspaper, the Bhutan Times, before becoming an autodidact filmmaker. Equally passionate about poetry, his poems have been published in several magazines. A self-taught filmmaker, Gyeltshen learnt the art of filmmaking largely by reading and watching films extensively.