Tibetan Filmmakers Who Paid with Freedom Condemn Nepal Festival for Chinese Propaganda
By Tenzin Chokyi

DHARAMSALA, 30 May: Two Tibetan filmmakers, who served time in Chinese prisons for their documentary work, have condemned the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival(KIMFF) for what they described as complicity in China’s effort to politicise film festivals to rewrite Tibet’s history. They have demanded an immediate cancellation of a film segment titled “Xizang Panorama”, featuring six short films, declaring it an attempt to justify China’s occupation of Tibet.
Dhondup Wangchen and Golog Jigme, renowned Tibetan filmmakers who secretly documented the true voices of the Tibetan people under Chinese occupation during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, issued a joint letter criticising the KIMFF for not upholding its values of representing authentic mountain voices.
The duo are widely respected for their courageous work on the documentary“Leaving Fear Behind”, filmed between October 2007 and March 2008. Risking their lives, they travelled across eastern Tibet to record the candid views of 108 Tibetans on the Dalai Lama, Chinese rule, and the Beijing Olympics. The footage was smuggled out of Tibet just before both were arrested by Chinese authorities.
“We are writing to you today as Tibetan filmmakers from Tibet who paid with our freedom for telling the truth about our homeland by film,” they wrote in the letter published on 30 May by Phayul, an English language Tibetan news portal.
The former Tibetan political prisoners have demanded the cancellation of the “Xizang Panorama” screening at the 22nd edition of the KIMFF, arguing that the films amount to Chinese propaganda and that they are harmful to the Tibetans living under threat of cultural extinction in occupied Tibet.
“The films being shown in this program are not harmless stories. They are propaganda. They tell the world that Tibet is free and happy under Chinese rule, while in reality, our people are under constant surveillance, our language is being eradicated, and our children are being separated from their families and sent to colonial boarding schools”.
They have further rejected the reductionist Chinese term “Xizang” to refer to “Tibet”, arguing it’s a part of China’s political campaign to rewrite history and everything Tibetan people stand for.
“The festival has handed those narrative control to the very forces seeking to silence those voices. “Xizang” is not the name of our homeland. It is the name the Chinese government uses to erase our identity. It is not neutral. It is not respectful. It is part of a political campaign to rewrite history and everything Tibetan people stand for”.
The filmmakers have urged the KIMFF, along with filmmakers and audiences who care about truth and justice, to reconsider supporting the “Xizang Panorama” segment.
Despite this appeal, according to KIMFF’s official schedule for Day 3, a film titled “Snow Leopard and Friend” from the “Xizang Panorama” lineup is set to screen at 7:30 p.m. today.
Ahead of the festival’s opening on 28th May, a coalition of 145 Tibet-related organizations also called for the immediate cancellation of the “Xizang Panorama”, a plea that was not heeded by KIMFF.
“Leaving Fear Behind” is one of the few films that authentically captures the true voices of ordinary Tibetan people living under Chinese repression in occupied Tibet. The screening of propaganda films about Tibet undermines the risk, courage, and authenticity embodied in such works.
While their tapes containing 35 hours of footage spanning a five-month period were smuggled into exile and made into a 25-minute documentary film, the duo were arrested in 2008 for their work.
Dhondup Wangchen was sentenced to six years in prison on 28 December 2009, on the charges of ‘subversion of state power’ and was released on 5 June 2014. Following his release, he escaped from Tibet and reunited with his family on Christmas Day in the US in 2017.
Golog Jigme was detained for seven months, during which he was severely tortured by the prison authorities. After his release, he was constantly harassed by the authorities and rearrested on several occasions. Jigme then disappeared in 2012 after Chinese police issued official orders for his arrest on trumped-up “murder charges”. After hiding in the mountains for one year and eight months, he managed to escape Tibet and reached the Tibetan Reception Centre in Dharamsala safely on 18 May 2014. He currently lives in Switzerland.
Now living in exile, they continue to share their story and advocate for the Tibetan people worldwide.