Balloon

Love, death, reincarnation and sheep – many, many sheep – make a poetic and philosophical mix in Balloon, the latest film from Tibetan director and author Pema Tseden, whose last film Jinpa won Best Screenplay Award in Venice’s Horizons section last year. A less fanciful brew than the genre-tweaking, narratively twisty Jinpa, Balloon is a family drama in a realist mode, with a strong quasi-documentary ethnographic streak. But it also has a pensive philosophical dimension and a style that is open to moments of reverie verging on magic realism.