From the Himalayan glaciers to the glam and glitz of Hollywood, the story of Bhutan’s lone glaciologist has reached the grandest stage of the Oscars. A documentary, ‘Bhutan Mountain Man: Video dairies from a lone glaciologist’ has qualified for the 2025 edition of the Oscars. This is the first Bhutanese documentary to qualify for the Academy Awards.
‘Bhutan Mountain Man’, is about the journey of Phuntsho Tshering, who mostly scales the mighty Himalayas for work while documenting the effects of climate change along the way.
Phuntsho is the lone glaciologist in the country.
The filmmaker, Arun Bhattarai, is a close friend and a former classmate of Phuntsho. Inspired by Phuntsho, Arun Bhattarai decided to follow his friend’s journey.
Arun Bhattarai said, “I saw that he was sacrificing a lot of time away from his family to go up to the mountains and to measure the glaciers and the lakes. He would go up to the mountains for months leaving home in very difficult precarious situations. So, as a filmmaker, I thought that it is also my duty to kind of talk about climate change and share it with local people here in Bhutan as well as abroad.”
The documentary also sheds light on organisations including the National Centre for Hydrology and Meteorology, which works to measure glaciers and keep people informed about the potential hazards of glacial lake outburst floods.
“I feel like through this film, if there is a possibility to raise funds in the future for an organisation like this, then that would be the ultimate goal,” added Arun Bhattarai.
A fly among the glaciers. Such visual depictions are some of the subtle ways that the documentary shows climate change unfolding in the high Himalayas.
Phuntsho’s daughter narrates the story from her point of view and unlike other documentaries, Phuntsho Tshering also documents himself.
Shot in 2022, the documentary won the grand prize at DOC NYC 2023, which is America’s largest documentary festival.
The DOC NYC is an Oscar-qualifying festival in the United States.
Now, the documentary has to compete with other qualified films to be nominated for the 2025 Oscars.
Devika Pradhan
Edited by Sherub Dorji
