Balloon

On the Tibetan grasslands, Dargye and Drolkar live with their three sons and the grandfather. They keep sheep and life is quiet. Drolkar uses condoms for contraception, which is neither common nor spoken about in that community. Things come apart when the children blow the condoms up as balloons. Then the grandfather dies, and according to the lama he will be reborn into the family. At exactly that point Drolkar becomes pregnant for a fourth time. On one side are the state's population policy and a household that cannot afford another child; on the other are a husband and a community who believe the grandfather is coming back. The decision falls to the woman, and nobody grants her the right to make it. Pema Tseden wrote and directed it; it screened in the Horizons section at Venice in 2019. A hundred and two minutes.