Arun Bhattarai
About
Arun Bhattarai’s first feature length documentary The Next Guardian premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2017. It has since been screened at major festivals, had theatrical releases and broadcasted around the world. The film was developed in several international workshops and pitching forums (IDFAcademy Summer School, Dare to Dream, TokyoDocs, AIDC etc). The film was supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund, The Bhutan Film Trust and the Creative Europe Media Fund.
His most recent documentary won ‘The Asia Pitch’ and was screened in NHK World TV and KBS Korea. Before becoming an independent film maker he worked as a TV director at the Bhutan Broadcasting Service (BBS) for more than 5 years. Hegraduated from the first edition of ‘Doc-nomads’ documentary film directing masters for which he was awarded a full Erasmus Mundus scholarship to study in Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels.
He established his own production company (Sound Pictures) dedicated to creative documentaries in Bhutan. He is currently working on his second feature length documentary Gross National Happiness and his climate change themed short Mountain Man which won the ‘IF Then shorts Global Pitch’ competition at IDFA 2019.
Gross National Happiness
Amar (40) and Gunaraj (36) are not only close friends but also “Happiness Agents”, who work together for Bhutan’s Ministry of Happiness. They travel door-to-door measuring people’s level of happiness among the remote Himalayan mountains - and in their mission, learn about people’s dreams and life goals. GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS is a satirical ‘road movie’ that takes us through a mosaic of stories exploring the real desires of a society with a specific national identity - an identity created by the Happiness Ministry of Bhutan, a country that has been closed-off for centuries.
Mountain Man
One of Bhutan’s first glaciologists risks his life every year as he hikes for days through dangerous terrain to measure the rapidly receding glaciers of the Himalayas. Will the glaciers ever stop melting at this pace or will he ever stop climbing?