No Winter Holidays review – haunting portrait of female companionship in Nepal’s frozen highlands

Two widows of the same man remain behind in an abandoned mountain village in Rajan Kathet and Sunir Pandey’s visually arresting documentary In the valley of Dhorpatan in western Nepal, winter arrives with unforgiving intensity. Clouds of freezing mist gradually descend, making the rocky terrain look starkly barren, a lonesome void amid vertiginous mountain ranges. At this time of the year, most of the inhabitants migrate south to warmer regions – except for two. Unfolding at a languid pace, R...

By Phuong Le