White Sun

The second feature by Nepali filmmaker Deepak Rauniyar sensitively explores the damage done to the fabric of his nation’s society by the decade-long civil war between the Maoists and Nepal’s monarchical government. On the occasion of his father’s funeral, Chandra (Dayahang Rai) returns to the village he left years earlier to join the Maoists, and finds himself united with the daughter he never met and revisiting uneasy relations with family members and neighbors. Past traumas ultimately return and cause tensions to boil over. Finding the political within the everyday, White Sun uses one village’s complex tribulations to speak to an entire national history. A 2017 New Directors/New Film selection.