Bhutanese filmmaker Khyentse Norbu is a unique figure in world cinema: director of the festival favorite The Cup, he is recognized in Tibetan Buddhism as one of its most important living lamas and the reincarnation of a revered nineteenth-century saint. Travellers and Magicians combines Norbu's evident filmmaking talents with a warm-hearted tale of journeys and dreamlands. In an isolated village, a bored young government official, Dondup, listens to rock music and dreams of escaping to America. When the chance arrives, Dondup hitchhikes to town along with an elderly apple seller, a sage young monk, and an old man with his beautiful daughter. Along the road, the monk tells him a story of another young man who sought a land far away. This first feature from Bhutan captures the landscape with breathtaking effect, whether in the crisp hues of Dondup's modern-day journey or through the monk's fable with its painterly array of shadows, lightplay, and richly saturated colors. Concerned with everyday realities yet embracing a beauty as magical as it is spiritual, Norbu has manufactured a film that-like his remarkable life-straddles the sacred and profane.