As a child, Vancouver-born Tibetan filmmaker Kunsang Kyirong would travel to India every other summer, visiting the refugee camp in Tezu, Arunachal Pradesh, where her mother grew up.Courtesy Kunsang Kyirong/Supplied
In the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, a long queue formed outside a giant red inflatable movie theatre set up in a football field surrounded by the towering snow-capped Himalayas. The 14th edition of the Dharamshala International Film Festival was under way, delivering on its promise to bring “independent cinema to the mountains.”
The city of Dharamshala is home to the Dalai Lama, who was forced to flee Tibet along with thousands of others in 1959 after the unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against occupying Chinese forces. They sought asylum in India and eventually established a formal government-in-exile here, known as the Central Tibetan Administration.
For Vancouver-born Tibetan filmmaker Kunsang Kyirong, the place holds many memories. As a child she would travel to India every other summer, visiting the refugee camp in Tezu, Arunachal Pradesh, where her mother grew up. She would also go to Dharamshala, eventually studying the Tibetan art of thangka painting at a local art centre after high school.
The film 100 Sunset is set in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood, also known as Little Tibet.Courtesy Kunsang Kyirong/Supplied
It was particularly meaningful, then, for her debut feature 100 Sunset – which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September – to have its South Asian premiere in Dharamshala, where DIFF ran Oct. 30 to Nov. 2.
The film is set in a part of Toronto not often seen on screen – the west-end neighbourhood of Parkdale, also known as Little Tibet.
“It was so nice to show the film in Toronto, in the city that we made it,” Kyirong said in an interview after her DIFF premiere. After TIFF, a private screening was held with an audience of 85 to 90 per cent Tibetans, she said.
“And now, having the screening here at DIFF with the Tibetan community, the DIFF audience, the larger Himalayan community … there’s nothing comparable.”
Opinion: Our devotion to the Dalai Lama – a beacon of humanity – goes beyond blind faith
The festival is intimate and charming, a labour of love that has grown through word of mouth, bringing film lovers from around India to the mountains for an immersive moviegoing experience over four days.
Held in a sprawling complex called the Tibetan Children’s Village, which continues to function as a school during the festival, films are screened in two bricks-and-mortar theatres and two pop-up inflatable theatres. There’s a general air of bonhomie, as people chat over cups of masala chai between screenings and Tibetan prayer flags flap overhead.
In addition to 100 Sunset (and Far From Home, another film about the Tibetan diaspora by Canadian documentary filmmaker Kristi Tethong), this year’s lineup included Zambian magical realism drama On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, an Australian animated film Lesbian Space Princess and a Palestinian experimental documentary With Hasan in Gaza.
Kyirong at the South Asian premiere of 100 Sunset.Courtesy Kunsang Kyirong/Supplied
The festival also featured films from Bhutan, Nepal and China. Two of Kyirong’s short films have previously played at the festival, which makes an effort to spotlight local and diaspora Tibetan filmmakers, as well as encourage participation from the wider Himalayan film community.
Kyirong felt she lacked this sense of kinship in Vancouver, where she grew up. It’s partly why she moved in 2021 to Parkdale, home to the largest Tibetan community in Canada. Two of her aunts lived in a building called Sunset Tower, which inspired the title of her film, and she visited them often throughout her teenage years.
“The community of Tibetans in Vancouver is much smaller and spread out,” she said. “Growing up, there [were] probably about 20 families. It was a very different experience. Going to India and also going to Parkdale was very exciting for me as a young teenage girl. It’s something that I always looked forward to.”
Opinion: China’s Himalayan megadam poses a global threat. Where is the world’s outrage?
She captures the tight-knit intimacy of Parkdale in 100 Sunset. The film centres around Kunsel, a reticent teenage protagonist whose preference for keeping a low profile not only affords her the opportunity to observe the adults around her but also to feed her kleptomania habit (money has no allure; she goes after interesting objects instead).
When Kunsel finds an old video camera, she shifts from observer to voyeur, surreptitiously filming the inhabitants of her apartment complex. Her quiet existence on the margins is disrupted when another young woman, Passang, moves into the complex with her older husband.
Passang is confident and bold, the opposite of the cautious Kunsel. Kyirong patiently allows their friendship to develop on screen, with murky motives on both ends adding to the complexity. As these young women learn to navigate restrictive spaces, both literally and metaphorically, Kyirong paints a compelling picture of the trust and tensions at play in such environments.
“This film represents a new chapter, a landmark moment, for Tibetan cinema in exile,” said DIFF’s festival director Tenzing Sonam at the screening for 100 Sunset, which played to a packed house. Many questions in the Q&A that followed were about the isolation that often defines the early immigrant experience, and the filmmaker’s decision to keep other aspects of Canadian life out of the frame.
Kyirong said she wanted to capture what it feels like to “grow up in a very insular community” like Parkdale.
“You can kind of go your whole life living there, working at a Tibetan restaurant, eating Tibetan food, and living in these dense buildings where you don’t always have to interact with other communities very much,” she said.
But within these boundaries also flourishes a spirit of camaraderie. In the making of this film, she relied on local restaurants and businesses and community leaders, who helped organize auditions at the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre.
“There is a strong sense of tradition but also community support. It is a thriving community in a lot of ways that practises different aspects of culture but also makes room for new stories.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the TIFF screening of 100 Sunset had an audience that was 85 to 90 per cent Tibetan. That is in reference to the audience for a private screening of the film after TIFF.