RVA’s International Short Film Contest Awards: Nepali Entry "Quest" Explores Earth’s Wounds
Quest transcends the frame of a short film, breathing as a silent but dark truth, etched into broken earth and the slow, relentless walk of survival. In five haunting minutes, it asks a question Laudato Si’ has already placed before humanity: How long can we wound the earth and still expect it to carry us?
Set in a post-war world scorched by environmental collapse, Quest follows Sahas, a man stripped of almost everything, except one stubborn grace: hope. As he searches for his lost daughter, the film strips civilization bare. Food and water are no longer commodities, they are sacraments. Ornaments, wealth, and status lie useless, while survival depends on what truly sustains life. Mahatma Gandhi’s warning echoes painfully here: “There is enough for our need, but not for our greed.” This is a world that learned that truth too late.
Viewed through the lens of Laudato Si’, Quest becomes a parable of ecological sin and human consequence. War ravages not only bodies but creation itself, accelerating climate catastrophe. The earth groans, and humanity reaps what it has sown. And yet, the film refuses despair. Like the Gospel, it insists that judgment is never God’s final word. Even in the shadow of end times, even with the Second Coming looming as reckoning, love persists. God still seeks. God still liberates. God still loves. Christ came to set captives free, and hope becomes the last unchained thing.
Directed by Surendra Joshi and produced by CINECRACKS, Quest is technically tight and emotionally restrained. Yogesh Yonzan’s cinematography lets silence speak, while the production team crafts a believable, bruised world without spectacle. The cast, led by Niraj Babu, carries the weight of loss with raw simplicity.
Quest doesn’t shout. It waits. And in that waiting, it asks the viewer: when everything collapses, what will you carry with you, your greed, or your love?
