Uma

The Tibetan belief of curing diseases through going into a trance by invoking certain spirits/protectors has been practiced and socially accepted for over a millennium. This art is mostly inherited by the healer’s son – sometimes by a daughter, who hereditarily posses this inborn channel which only needs to be opened to be initiated as a healer. With a history of 13 generation of continuous spiritual healers in the family, 78-year-old Pao Wangchuk is frustrated with the fact that his son is incapable of continuing the family legacy.

Dipak and Saraswati live a simple life in Kathmandu. A devoted father and an adoring husband, Dipak works as a security guard, while Saraswati happily tends to traditional housework. Their home is modest, and their two girls are happy. Life would be perfect for the pregnant mother if only she could give her husband a son. Desperate in her desire, on the advice of a stranger, Saraswati prays to a new spirit with miraculous results. When the blessing turns to tragedy, the distraught couple appeals to Gita, a jhangrini or healer, revered as a powerful spirit medium. Gita's own crisis of faith and, perhaps, her stunning beauty, forces all three to a dizzying climax, leaving the lines between secular and spiritual desires eerily blurred.

Young Pooja lives with her mother in a village in Nepal. Though saddened by the death of her grandfather, she is secretly thrilled at the prospect of meeting the man she hopes may be her father — Chandra, a former Maoist guerrilla who is returning home after a decade-long civil conflict.

We are in the year 2001, a temporary ceasefire brings a much-needed break to a small war-torn village in Northern Nepal, bringing much joy among the residents. Prakash and Kiran, two young close friends, are also starting to feel the change in the air. Though they are divided by caste and social creed, they remain inseparable, and start raising a hen given to Prakash by his sister, with hopes to save money by selling her eggs. However, the hen goes missing. To find it, they embark on a journey, innocently unaware of the tyranny brought by the fragile ceasefire.

The Lama Mani is a storytelling technique that is used to illustrate the Buddhist view of the universe, including ethics and cosmology, often told with thangkas as visual supports.