Tibet without idealization A German mountaineer comes to Tibet from Berlin to conquer another eight-thousander. Staying in a settlement near Lhasa, she unexpectedly becomes involved in an underground group to smuggle Tibetans to India. This is a very dangerous and risky venture because the borders are carefully guarded by the Chinese. The Chinese need the so-called golden boy, the next candidate for the title of Dalai Lama. His underground workers also want to move abroad. Climber Johanna becomes a member of one of the underground groups and goes on a journey with children. She is detained by the Chinese, then released, but she does not give up and brings the matter to the end.
The Chinese in the film are painted with one black paint. The head of a Chinese anti-Illegal Tibetan emigration group looks like a monster, ready to torture underground fighters to death in hopes of finding out the location of the golden boy. This character is very reminiscent of the images of gabists in Russian films of the nineties. The director makes an attempt to explain his truth, for which he becomes so unprincipled, and reduces everything to the fact that the Chinese want to make Tibet democratic like the PRC itself, and not leave it under the control of fat Buddhist priests who deceive people. It is difficult to believe such arguments, of course, given that the whole world knows about the cult of asceticism in Tibet. Such a harsh denigration of the Chinese, who are destroying millennial culture, is read as a sympathy of the filmmakers for the traditions of Tibet. As for the Chinese, they not only guard the border, but also break into peaceful houses with machine guns, conducting raids. During one of them, they arrested Johanna.
However, the director refuses to idealize Tibet. One of the boys, whom Johanna volunteered to transfer to India, is engaged in what he steals from tourists. He also steals from local canteens. After spending the night in the same bed with him, Johanna wakes up all in lice. Ordinary Tibetans are not shown in their supra-worldly grandeur, but rather in silent incomprehensibility. None of them are shown during meditation. What is particularly depressing is the fact that both Tibetans and Chinese speak German. In general, the film is not as informative as it could be, with very little information about the lives of Tibetans. It has a somewhat adventurous and at the same time tense-dramatic character, although it is dedicated to a fateful event for the Buddhist world.
8 out of 10