Who will be a Gurkha documentary review

A good movie/documentary always makes you happy after you get out of the cinema hall and there you could get the whole review in a single word. "Nice work" was the word most people used while coming out of the theater.  I was scintillated at many times during the whole length of the documentary and I got a sense of calling it a movie while leaving the cinema as it has got all that what it takes to be a full feature movie. It has a strong content, touchy emotions, ups and downs , funny moments with a nice flow. Though I don't know if some scenes were dramatized in it, its pretty worthy that adds nice aroma to the strong content of the documentary. The documentary was already acclaimed in different film festivals including KIMFF,  which made it to Cinemas in capital ( QFX and F-cube ).

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Well, "Who will be a Gurkha" is based on a tough recruitment process that many young Nepali goes through to be selected for British Gurkha Army and be ready to fight in the worst war-torn regions like Afghanistan.
The documentary shows the two level examination of young Nepalis who are hell bound to be in a British Army special brigade that has 200 years of history including World War I and II fight. Having checked with chest size, eye test, set up, chin up, running, weight, height, written examination and even Interview, both Nepali and British guy there tells the selection process to be free, fair and transparent inside a British Gurkha camp at Pokhara. Some of the young guys were shown intelligent answering pretty good with the tough questions whereas others were seen very nervous and unable to answer properly which seems quite obvious for the young lads. One funny instance is when a British interviewer girl asks a guy if he knows why there is a war in Afghanistan, he first tells her that the Muslim people there wants to take revenge of Osama Bin Laden's killing but after she says that the war is already a decade, long before laden's death, he then refers the war between Israel and America to be the reason behind the war in Afghanistan, which shows the sheer ignorance of the young boy.

Hundreds of young Nepali aged 17.5 to 21 are shown to opt for a new career and shown so brave enough to be killed that one of them sympathized himself that "Even if we die,our parents will get the money".   Among which, only 88 gets selected in the end.

Other BGA aspirants were: 

• a young guy who told the interviewers that he had thought of taking revenge with Maoists (beeped by Censor board) for shutting down his school in his childhood that forced him to leave his village.  
• a guy who have his birthday on the same day of selection results. 
• another guy who has very big dream of getting in as his father, grandfathers could not make it to the selection. 
• a guy who wants to save his family from debts. 
• some other guys who tried so many times for this, after having no alternative than to keep on fighting for the British Army. 

Well to know which of them gets selected, you have to the watch the documentary that is running good (positive response) in cinemas, but with lesser no of shows now. Though the movie is very interesting to all those aspirant "Lahure" and their families (one guy next to me was explaining all the things to his girlfriend and she was made well acquainted with all the procedures), I think every Nepali film-maker should watch it to know how to do good justice to a strong content, albeit some camera focus defects are there (may be intentional to make it look raw). I did like the way the thrill is maintained from the very start and you keep on searching for the message from the documentary in the end which I have found from an answer to a question that a British guy asks " Will you opt to go for British army, if you get the same pay here in your country". And the answer young guy says is "No". But I did not like the way an English guy laughs heavily telling others that Nepal is the second worst corrupt country in Asia after Afghanistan. The song "Jadai chu Paltan ma" well catches people with the documentary theme.

All in all, a nice documentary film by Kesang Tseten showing young people's charm for the British Gurkha Army and the miserable venture within.