One and Four (NC) [EAFFI Discoveries]

Jigme Trinley’s debut feature co-produced by his father Tibetan writer, producer and director Pema Tseden, and based on a novel by Jamyang Tsering, is a fun, stylish, psychological western-thriller-fable set in the late 1990s. 

Forest ranger Sanggye (Jinpa) is isolated, confused, starving and hungover after a night of drinking with Kunbo, a friend and neighbour from Sanggye’s village who came to visit. The next day, sitting alone in his wooden cabin in the wilderness of the frozen Tibetan forest he writes in the forest patrol journal. With a blizzard fast approaching, he is visited one after another by three duplicitous men, each with their own stories: an injured forestry police officer carrying a rifle and claiming to chase a poacher; Kunbo back again, bringing information about his wife; and another man also claiming to be a policeman. But who truly are these men? Caught in a complicated ‘huis clos’ of double-crossing and mistaken identities, tension, suspicion and paranoia escalate through the mesmerising photography by DOP Lu Songye, and the wonderful soundscape by Ding Ke in ONE AND FOUR. A unique, thrilling and captivating experience. 

(Marie-Pierre Richard, programmer/curator of EAFFI & EAFFI Discoveries)