The Sweet Requiem

Fifty years after the fall of his country, can the Dalai Lama make a breakthrough in his efforts to find a solution to the Tibet question?

Age-old customs and traditions collide with a rapidly modernizing India when Hari, a small-town taxi driver, has an arranged marriage to a girl he has never met

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

This film was one of seven commissioned of leading documentary filmmakers in India as part of a series, India’s Quest, to commemorate 50 years of India’s independence. An exploration of the nature and scope of the crisis of modern India. The mechanization of the fishing industry has depleted fish stocks worldwide leading to a major crisis. Along the Kerala coast, traditional fishermen face similar problems as their catch dwindles every season. In the village of Adimalathura, a group of fishermen come together in an effort to reverse this trend. Their solution? Constructing artificial reefs out of ferro-concrete and then planting them on the seabed.

The father, who “ran, ran, and flew” from the source of the Mekong River, sings to his young daughter. Yangchen, who lives in India, meets with her sister, who has returned from France for their mother’s funeral, and reveals the wounds she could not share with their parents. After a brief encounter with his old friend Jigdal, who has come from America, Thangka artist Sonam suddenly feels as though his simple life is too shabby. And Tenzin who lives in Wisconsin arrives in Dharamsala, where he spent his childhood, carrying his father’s ashes.

The Tibetan people are well known for being devoutly religious and peace-loving. Few, however, know that thousands of Tibetans took up arms against the invading forces of Communist China and for more than a decade waged a bitter and bloody guerrilla war of resistance. From the mid-1950s until 1969 the Tibetans were aided in their efforts by an unlikely ally: the CIA.

An intimate look at the life of a young lama as he aspires to live up to the reputation of his former incarnation. It also explores his moving relationship with the two people closest to him, his attendant and his spiritual master, both of whom were connected to him in his previous life.

The poignant and personal account of Tenzing Sonam’s first-ever visit to his homeland, from the far reaches of Amdo Province, where Tibetans have lost their language, to Lhasa, the heart of the country.