Nepali Film ‘Dust’ Rising to International Fame

In an encouraging update for Nepali film industry, a documentary about Nepali children working in local brick kilns has been selected for 17 international film festivals.

This film titled Dust (Chhaaro), a film directed by Kathmandu-based Deepak Tolange and Berlin-based filmmaker & photographer, has already won four global awards.

The 50-minute documentary, divided into three different chapters with each speaking the process of manufacturing bricks, features children working in Bhaktapur’s brick factories.

The Makers, the first chapter, shows the life of Panchalal Tamang who manufactures bricks along with his family in Kavre.

The second chapter titled The Transporters shows two Dang-based workers, Arjun Pun and Bishnu Pun, transporting raw bricks from the fields to the kilns.

And, the third chapter The Loaders portrays the labourers who move the finished product onto trucks for market supply.

It’s heartening that the film covers 14-year-old kids deprived of school education for working in brick kilns.

“Dust explores an ethnographic story but is more playful than academic. The children were definitely working on the job out of compulsion so it is child labor, but the film is more concerned about migration and about uncovering their lifestyle than about just exploring human rights,” says the movie Director Tolange.

So far, the film has been screened at the Parnu Film Festival in Estonia, won ‘Best Film’ award Anthropofest in Prague, Toronto Nepali Film Festival, Ethnokino in Zurich and the German International Ethnographic Film Festival, among other international film fests.

And, the next participation is going to be seen at the Global University Film Awards scheduled for November 7-9, 2018 in Hong Kong.

Dust Movie Stills

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