Tenzin (Tsering Tashi Gyalthang) is a young musician and entrepreneur living in a fast-changing Nepal; he plans to open his own coffee shop, which he hopes will attract Western tourists. But even as he thinks he’s moving forward, he struggles with a disconnect from his culture and is destabilized by otherworldly visions of women who seem to follow him across Kathmandu. At a close friend’s behest, Tenzin confides in an eccentric monk (Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche), who interprets these hallucinations as death omens—that is, unless Tenzin commits to a journey of self-discovery and a reckoning with his spiritual skepticism.

Khyentse Norbu—whose Vara: A Blessing was awarded at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival—brings his experience as a Buddhist lama to bear on Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache. In this film, his fourth feature, he explores the tensions between capitalism and traditionalism that roil in a time when religion may be as commodified as a kitschy curio. But what emerges in Tenzin’s atmospheric music, and in the trancelike cinematography of Mark Lee Ping-bing (In the Mood for Love), is the need to cut through these distractions to truly reconnect with life’s fundamentals.—Miriam Garcia