White Sun Screening

The Film White Sun directed by Deepak Raunivar was really incredible. It was a window to another world. Shedding light on a culture people know little about, the audience is taken on an adventure looking through the traditions of the small village Nepaltra. It was unorthodox that the documentary type film had the audience learn so much about the personal lives of the characters. For a documentary there was a lot of drama, including its own love triangle. I was deeply invested in finding out as much as I could about the culture, how they approached death was fascinating to see. However, I was worried that the director made their traditions into a spectacle for people to see but I am glad it did not feel that way. For a land so foreign and different form the one I lived, it was interesting to notice the similarities between our societies. Woman were treated as subordinates and old people feared dying alone. There is definitely a relativity to these similarities. Woman there were treated very badly, I felt so bad for the ex wife of the protagonist, she was not allowed to touch the body because she would "taint" it. That seems so fucked up to me, I cannot understand how woman are treated that way even if the societies are different and were built on different morals and philosophies that was just so fucked up to me. Honestly I hated the old men through the whole movie, I kind of wished it was their funeral as well; they treated everyone else badly and they were useless by themselves. I know theres respect for the elderly but they were down right awful. The one moment that I felt they were humanized was when they were afraid their children would never return and that they had to die alone.