✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
China · 2019
1h 42m
Director Pema Tseden
Starring Sonam Wangmo, Jinpa, Yangshik Tso, Konchok
Genre Drama
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
In the Tibetan grasslands, a mishap with a condom leads a couple to an unwanted pregnancy. They are apprehensive at the idea of having another child. However, following the recent passing of their children's grandfather, the couple is forced to grapple with whether or not they should consider their unborn child as the reincarnation of its grandfather.
CineVue by Christopher Machell
Balloon never uses its characters as proxies for political discussion; Tseden’s concern is firmly with his characters as human beings. His method is rooted in realism, favouring intimate, often handheld camera work whose immediacy is juxtaposed against often stunningly beautiful compositions and dreamlike landscapes.
Little White Lies by David Jenkins
Tseden directs with a low-slung commitment to a dramatically heightened form of social realism, and this deceptively simple story ends up speaking volumes about how love, sex, marriage and parenting sit at a paradoxical remove from the dictates of the state, and the parochial attitudes of the older generation.
While armed with plenty of social critique, the beauty of Balloon goes beyond this tug-of-war between modernity and tradition.
The Observer (UK) by Wendy Ide
The latest film from the acclaimed writer-director Pema Tseden casts a typically wry eye over the collision between modernity and tradition in 1980s Tibet.
A ten-year-old girl must save her parents from hostile spirits.
A gunfighter with no name drifts into a small town and plays both sides as two corrupt families fight each other.
Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece.
A team of American scientists in Antarctica attempt to fight off a deadly shapeshifting alien.
In 2031, the passengers aboard the Snowpiercer are the only survivors on Earth.
She’s everything. He’s just Ken.
A failed stand-up comedian is driven insane, turning to a life of crime in chaos in Gotham City.
A poor family lies and schemes their way into the employ of a wealthy household — successfully, but with great consequences.