As a crew of 35 people prepared to make a movie in Bhutan’s remote Lunana Valley, they faced a slew of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
The valley had no electricity. It could only be reached by walking eight days from the nearest village. And the schoolchildren who were expected to star in the film knew nothing about acting or cinema.

“They did not even know what a camera was or what it looked like,” Namgay Dorji, the village schoolteacher, said in a telephone interview.

On Tuesday, the movie, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” was nominated for an Academy Award — a first for Bhutan. Its director, Pawo Choyning Dorji, said he had been on an “improbable journey” ever since deciding to shoot the film, his first, in a Himalayan village about 3 miles above sea level.

“It was so improbable that I thought I wouldn’t be able to finish,” said Dorji, 38, who is from a rural part of Bhutan that is east of Lunana.

“Somehow we now find ourselves nominated for an Oscar,” he added. “When I found out, it was so unbelievable that I kept telling my friends, ‘What if I wake up tomorrow and I realise all this was a dream?’”