Avash Rijal’s ‘The Witness of Yara’ Wins Dolomiti Award at Religion Today Film Festival
Nepali documentary filmmaker Avash Rijal has earned international recognition for The Witness of Yara, a deeply personal Himalayan story about climate change, culture and communities living high in Nepal’s mountains. The film received the Dolomiti Award at the 29th Religion Today Film Festival in Italy.
The 15-minute-29-second documentary was honoured with the Premio Dolomiti, or Dolomiti Award, during the festival’s 2026 edition in Italy’s Trentino region.
The award carries particular significance for a film in which the mountain is not simply a beautiful setting, but an essential part of the lives, identity and cultural memory of the people at the centre of the story.
Italian coverage of the awards said the Dolomiti jury recognised The Witness of Yara for portraying the mountain as an anthropological and social reference point for a community of Tibetan origin and for examining how climate change threatens the identity of Nepal’s Upper Mustang region.
Climate change through a Himalayan woman’s eyes
Filmed at an altitude of nearly 3,800 metres, The Witness of Yara explores climate change through the perspective of a young woman living in Nepal’s Himalayan region.
Instead of approaching the climate crisis only through scientific data, melting glaciers or rising temperatures, the documentary brings the issue into everyday human life.
It looks at how environmental changes can affect traditions, relationships, livelihoods and the connection that mountain communities have maintained with their surroundings for generations.
The film runs for 15 minutes and 29 seconds, while Narayan GC and Bikal Thapa handled its cinematography.
The Dolomiti jury highlighted the film’s simple storytelling and its emotional approach to a much larger issue, noting how climate change poses a threat not only to the environment but also to the cultural identity associated with the Upper Mustang region.
A Story From Nepal’s Himalayas Wins Recognition in the Italian Alps
A Nepali mountain story reaches the Italian Alps
There is also a striking geographical connection behind the recognition. A documentary rooted in Nepal’s Himalayas received a mountain-focused award in Trentino, a northern Italian region shaped by the Dolomites.
For The Witness of Yara, that setting makes the recognition especially fitting. The documentary asks viewers to see mountains not simply as landscapes to admire, but as living environments around which communities build their culture, livelihoods and sense of belonging.
Its international recognition brings a distinctly Nepali Himalayan story into a wider conversation about what communities around the world stand to lose as environmental conditions change.
Recognition comes during a painful period for Rijal
For Rijal, however, the international honour arrived at a difficult personal moment. The filmmaker, a permanent resident of Rasuwa district, said many of his relatives and friends were affected by the devastating Bhotekoshi floods of August 26.
He said the village where he grew up and the school where he studied had been washed away, making it difficult to celebrate the recognition in the usual way.
Rijal dedicated the recognition to those who lost their lives in the disaster and thanked people who had expressed support and solidarity with Nepal.
The circumstances create a painful parallel with the subject of his documentary. A film examining environmental change and vulnerable Himalayan communities has gained international attention at a time when the filmmaker’s own home region has been dealing with the consequences of a major natural disaster.
Avash Rijal Wins Dolomiti Award for Himalayan Documentary ‘The Witness of Yara’
63 films from 37 countries
The 29th Religion Today Film Festival was held from September 16 to 23, 2026, with programmes taking place across Trento, Rovereto and other locations in Italy’s Trentino region.
The festival featured 63 films from 37 countries, including five world premieres, eight European premieres and 10 Italian premieres. Organisers also reported the participation of dozens of filmmakers, producers, actors and other international guests.
Founded in 1997, Religion Today is an international film festival built around cinema, spirituality, intercultural exchange and interreligious dialogue.
The theme of the 2026 edition was “L’abito fa il monaco?”, roughly translated as “Does the habit make the monk?”, with the programme exploring relationships between ethics, appearance, fashion, identity, sustainability and visual culture.
The main award ceremony was held at the MART museum in Rovereto on September 20.
A Recognition Closely Connected to the Film’s Theme
The Witness of Yara received the Premio Dolomiti, awarded by a jury comprising Andrea Franceschini, Annunziato Gentiluomo and Paola Pannicelli.
The recognition closely reflects the documentary’s central idea: the relationship between mountains, people, culture and environmental change.
The jury highlighted the way the film presents the mountain not simply as a landscape, but as an anthropological and social reference point for the community at the centre of the story.
That makes the Dolomiti Award especially meaningful for The Witness of Yara, a film that shows how climate change can affect not only the natural environment, but also identity, memory and the cultural life built around Nepal’s high mountains.
Another international platform for Nepali documentary cinema
Rijal has been involved with documentary filmmaking and Nepal’s human-rights film community for several years. He currently serves as General Secretary of the Human Rights Film Center, the organisation behind the Nepal Human Rights International Film Festival.
His earlier documentary project Himalayan Shepherd was also selected for international documentary development platforms, including DocEdge, while the project received an award at Dhaka DocLab in 2022.
With The Witness of Yara, Rijal has once again taken a story rooted in Nepal’s mountains beyond the country’s borders.
The Dolomiti Award gives the documentary a wider platform while drawing attention to a larger question behind the film: when the climate of the Himalayas changes, what happens not only to the landscape, but also to the communities, traditions and identities that have grown around it for generations?
