Releasing tomorrow, January 1, 2021, on digital platforms is Thomas Balmès’s Sing Me a Song, which finds the French documentarian returning to the town of Laya in Bhutan, the scene of his excellent 2014 documentary Happiness, to learn how one of its subjects, an eight-year-old monk named Peyangki who’s now a teenager, is dealing with the late arrival to his monastery of the internet and social media. Needless to say, the combination of adolescence and technology has created profound changes in Peyangki’s life — changes that provide insight into the ways in which these forms of communication have changed all of ours. Writes Kristin Yongsoo Kim in the New York Times, “Balmès doesn’t arrive at easy, scathing conclusions about the internet. Instead, he lets the camera journey to unexpected places, leading to a different kind of meditation that strikes with deep emotional resonance, illustrating the coexistence of old and new and driving home how modern conveniences can shake an entire nation’s faith.”

Watch a clip from Sing Me a Song featuring Peyangki above.