A Song for the Snow Lion Connects Bhutanese Folklore With Climate Change

Bhutanese filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji and cellist Yo-Yo Ma explore disappearing Himalayan glaciers, folklore and climate awareness in A Song for the Snow Lion.

Bhutanese filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji has joined acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma for A Song for the Snow Lion, a short documentary that brings Bhutanese folklore, music and the changing Himalayan environment together.

The 21-minute film premiered at the 2026 Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on 5th September 2026, where it introduced international audiences to a Bhutanese story about the snow lion, a mythical guardian associated with the country’s high mountains and glaciers.

For Pawo, whose Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom became Bhutan’s first film nominated for Oscars, the project is also a way of exploring what may be lost as Himalayan glaciers retreat.

A collaboration rooted in concern for the Himalayas

The project began after Ma approached Pawo following his experience of watching Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. According to Pawo, Ma wanted their collaboration to address global warming and the melting glaciers of the Himalayas.

Rather than making a conventional music video, Pawo proposed building the film around a folk story familiar from his childhood.

In the story, snow lions live wherever glaciers remain. The tale has traditionally given children a cultural reason to respect the mountains and the ice.

“Children are taught to respect and honor the glaciers because it is the home to the snow lions,” Pawo shared with Deadline. “When I made the Yak in the Classroom, there were many children who I met up there in the highlands and they all said, ‘Oh, we are worried because the glaciers are melting and one day maybe the snow lion will have no home.’ And that’s such a beautiful folk tale.”

The idea gives the documentary its environmental message. Climate change is presented not only as a physical transformation of the landscape, but also as something that can affect the stories, traditions and relationships that communities have built around that landscape.

Music returns to Lunana

A Song for the Snow Lion takes Ma into Lunana, one of Bhutan’s most remote highland regions and the setting of Pawo’s earlier film.

The documentary features Ma performing alongside Bhutanese folk singer Kelden Lhamo. Their performance revisits music heard in Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, connecting the new film with the people and landscape that helped shape Pawo’s first feature.

The final sequence was filmed at an elevation of about 5,500 metres, or 18,000 feet. Ma required medical monitoring and supplemental oxygen because of the altitude. Pawo has said the filmmakers had only one morning to capture the scene and completed the performance in a single take.

The production also recorded the sound of a glacier cracking shortly after the performance, which was incorporated into the film.

A timely message amid disaster in Nepal

The film arrives at a particularly difficult moment for the Himalayan region.

On August 26, 2026, a glacier collapse near the Nepal-China border triggered catastrophic flooding that swept through mountain valleys, destroying settlements and infrastructure. Rescue operations were still continuing in early September, with thousands of people reported dead or missing across Nepal and Tibet.

Both Nepal and China have linked the glacier collapse to climate change, while scientists have warned that warming across the Himalayan region is increasing risks associated with retreating glaciers, unstable slopes and sudden floods.

Against this backdrop, the message of A Song for the Snow Lion carries added relevance. It raises awareness of climate and environmental change through a distinctly Bhutanese perspective, showing how the loss of glaciers can affect not only water systems and physical safety, but also cultural memory and ways of understanding nature.

Ma himself has connected the film to the disaster in Nepal, saying, “The tragedy in Nepal last month is a reminder of the stakes, for the region and for the world.”

For Bhutan, the risks are not abstract. The country experienced a major glacial lake outburst flood from Lugge Tsho in 1994. Bhutan’s National Center for Hydrology and Meteorology records that the disaster killed 21 people, damaged 91 houses and affected 1,781 acres of land.

Today, warming temperatures and melting glaciers continue to increase concern around glacial lakes and downstream communities. UNDP has also identified rapidly melting glaciers and the resulting risk of glacial lake outburst floods as a growing challenge for Bhutan’s highland communities.

Using stories to build environmental awareness

A Song for the Snow Lion does not approach climate change primarily through statistics or scientific explanation. Instead, it asks what traditional stories can contribute to the way people understand environmental responsibility.

That approach has particular relevance in Bhutan, where relationships with mountains, rivers and forests have long been reflected in spiritual traditions, oral histories and local customs.

By taking a Bhutanese folk story to an international film festival, Pawo and Ma are placing those ideas within a wider conversation about climate change in the Himalayas.

The timing makes that conversation especially urgent. The disaster in Nepal has shown the human consequences that can follow rapid environmental change in fragile mountain regions. A Song for the Snow Lion offers another way into that discussion, using music, film and cultural memory to encourage greater awareness of what is changing, and what may be at stake.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Bhutanese folk singer/actress Kelden Lhamo in ‘A Song for the Snow Lion.’