Yo-Yo Ma Trekked to 18,000 Feet for a Short Film About Vanishing Himalayan Glaciers, Premiering at Telluride
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Bhutanese director Pawo Choyning Dorji have collaborated on a 21-minute short film, 'A Song for the Snow Lion,' which screens at the 53rd Telluride Film Festival as part of the official programme. Variety unveiled the first trailer on 3 September 2026, the same day the festival announced its full lineup (Awards Daily; Variety).
The film is built around a Himalayan folktale: snow lions, mythical guardians of the mountains, are said to live wherever glaciers survive. As the glaciers retreat, the lions vanish with them.
The project began with Ma himself. He had wanted to visit Bhutan for years, and he approached Dorji with an idea for a collaboration addressing global warming and the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers. Ma initially proposed a music video. Dorji pushed for something more — a short film grounded in a folktale he had grown up hearing (Variety).
Dorji is no stranger to the awards conversation. His 2019 feature 'Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom' earned Bhutan its first-ever Oscar nomination for best international feature film. His follow-up, 'The Monk and the Gun,' was shortlisted in the same category but did not receive a nomination (Variety).
For 'A Song for the Snow Lion,' Dorji took the production back to Lunana — the same remote valley that gave his Oscar-nominated feature its name. Shooting took place at elevations above 5,500 metres (18,100 feet), in a valley reachable only by a 14-day trek from the nearest road and powered entirely by solar batteries (Variety).
Ma suffered altitude sickness during the shoot. He still performed the film's climactic cello piece alongside Bhutanese folk singer Kelden Lhamo (Variety).
The short is a 2026 Bhutan–U.S. co-production. It joins a Telluride lineup announced in early September that also features new work starring Andrew Scott, Julianne Moore, and John Malkovich (IndieWire; The Film Stage).
What makes this collaboration stand out is the unlikely chain of decisions behind it. A world-renowned cellist wanted to make a music video about climate change. A Bhutanese film-maker talked him into trekking two weeks into the mountains to tell a folktale instead. The result is a 21-minute film shot at the altitude where the glaciers it mourns are disappearing.
