Pig at the Crossing

Pig at the Crossing is a 2024 drama film written and directed by Khyentse Norbu. It is the director's seventh feature and the most recent as of 2026. The film is performed in Dzongkha and English with a small Nepali component, runs 119 minutes, and was produced through Khyentse Norbu's Thimphu-based Norling Studios.^[1]

The story follows Dolom, a 29-year-old Bhutanese man living between Thimphu and Kathmandu, who dies in a motorcycle accident on his way to meet his girlfriend Deki and finds himself in a disorienting in-between realm. With the help of a guide whose status is left ambiguous, he confronts memories of his living life and the consequences of his actions. The screenplay draws explicitly on the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the bardo, the intermediate state between death and rebirth described in the Bardo Thodol (popularly known in English as the Tibetan Book of the Dead), and the film has been read as a companion piece to Khyentse Norbu's earlier Hema Hema in his treatment of bardo themes.^[2]

Unusually for a Khyentse Norbu film, Pig at the Crossing did not enter a major festival circuit. The director has said publicly that the project was declined by approximately thirty festivals, and the producers responded by mounting a global virtual premiere on 11 May 2024 through the film's own platform with parallel theatrical screenings in selected cities.^[3]

Production

Principal photography took place in 2022 and 2023 in Kathmandu and surrounding areas, with limited Bhutanese sequences. The film was produced by Pawo Choyning Dorji and the Norling Studios team, with cinematography by Jigme T. Tenzing. The cast features Bhutanese performers in the lead roles, including the actor playing Dolom and a supporting ensemble drawn from the Kathmandu Tibetan-exile community.^[4]

Themes

The film extends Khyentse Norbu's long-running interest in cinema as a vehicle for Vajrayana cosmology. Where The Cup (1999) used the comedy of monastic life to introduce Buddhist thought to non-Buddhist audiences, Pig at the Crossing places the bardo at the centre of the narrative without explanatory framing. The pig of the title alludes to the central animal in the wheel-of-life imagery of Tibetan iconography, traditionally representing ignorance, and the title's "crossing" refers both to the literal road junction where the accident takes place and to the bardo passage between lives.

Distribution and Reception

The virtual premiere on 11 May 2024 was followed by limited theatrical runs in Bhutan, Nepal, India and selected cities in Europe and North America. Asian Movie Pulse, Buddhistdoor and the International Buddhist Film Foundation covered the release, with critical responses praising the production design and the lead performance while noting the film's didactic structure and its rejection of conventional festival distribution. The film was selected for the International Buddhist Film Festival's 2024 official selection series.^[5]

Within the cinema of Bhutan, Pig at the Crossing is notable as a return to the Dzongkha-language tradition of Travellers and Magicians after two films set primarily in Sri Lanka and Nepal, and as the most explicit treatment of the bardo in Khyentse Norbu's filmography to date.^[6]

References

1. Pig at the Crossing — official film site
2. Film Review: Pig at the Crossing — Asian Movie Pulse
3. Bhutanese director Khyentse Norbu turns to virtual screening for Pig At The Crossing — Screen Daily
4. Pig at the Crossing — IMDb
5. Khyentse Norbu's Pig at the Crossing Set for virtual premiere on 11 May — Buddhistdoor Global
6. IBFF Official Selection Series Begins December 8 — Buddhist Film Foundation