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Dreaming Lhasa




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Awards & Screenings
  • Film Specifications
  • Year 2005
  • Format DV Cam
  • Language Tibetan, English
  • Subtitles English

A voyage to Tibet like you’ve never seen

Karma, a Tibetan filmmaker from New York, goes to Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s exile headquarters in northern India, to make a documentary about former political prisoners who have escaped from Tibet. She wants to reconnect with her roots but is also escaping a deteriorating relationship back home.
One of Karma’s interviewees is Dhondup, an enigmatic ex-monk who has just escaped from Tibet.

He confides in her that his real reason for coming to India is to fulfill his dying mother’s last wish, to deliver a charm box to a long-missing resistance fighter. Karma finds herself unwittingly falling in love with Dhondup even as she is sucked into the passion of his quest, which becomes a journey into Tibet’s fractured past and a voyage of self-discovery.

Awards & Screenings

  • 30th International de Films de Femmes, Creteil, France
  • 3rd Festiwal Filmy Swiata, Poland
  • 10th Ethnofilmfest, Berlin
  • Circle Cinema, Tulsa
  • Northwest Film Forum, Seattle
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
  • Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago
  • ImaginAsian Theater, New York
  • Himalayan Film Festival, Amsterdam
  • Austin Asian Film Festival, USA
  • International Buddhist Film Festival, Amsterdam
  • Munich Asia Filmfest
  • Films from the South, Oslo
  • Berlin Asia-Pacific Film Festival
  • Independent South Asian Film Festival, Seattle
  • Bite the Mango Film Festival, Bradford, UK
  • Festival do Rio (Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival)
  • Pacific-Meridian Vladivostock International Film Festival, Russia
  • Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, New York
  • 54th Trento Film Festival, Italy
  • Minneapolis-St Paul International Film Festival
  • Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles
  • Roma Independent Film Festival
  • Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, London
  • 24th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival
  • 2006 Bangkok International Film Festival
  • Spice PVR Cinemas, Noida, Delhi
  • International Habitat Centre, New Delhi
  • 12th Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival, Canada
  • 10th International Film Festival of Kerala
  • 8th International Meeting of Cinema and History, Istanbul
  • 1st Asian Festival of 1st Films, Singapore
  • 2nd Amazonas Film Festival, Manaus, Brazil
  • 53rd San Sebastian International Film Festival
  • 30th Toronto International Film Festival