They
are the refugees that aren’t featured in music videos or fund-raising concerts.
Although China has occupied Tibet for nearly fifty years, there is still steady
stream of Tibetan refugees, braving the elements and Chinese border patrols to
seek asylum in India. Those border guards will fire at will, as they did in September
2006, when they gunned down a seventeen-year-old nun. That incident was the seed
that eventually germinated in the second narrative feature from the filmmaker
tandem responsible for Dancing at Lhasa.
Survivor’s guilt remains a potent force in Dolkar’s life, but even when they
reach Northern India, Tibetan refugees like her are not safe from Chinese moles
and spies in Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam’s The Sweet Requiem, which screens during the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.
With
the Chinese encroaching on their traditional nomadic grasslands, Dolkar’s
father decided he had to take her to India if she was to have any sort of
future. She survived the trip, but he did not. Technically, he was shot by the
Chinese, but she blames Gompo, the guide who abandoned their traveling party. Twenty
years later (give or take), she is a poor but independent woman living in
India. She is popular with the Tibetan expat community, but she has not seen
her mother and sister since she left. It is a relatively simple life, but it is
upended by the arrival of a supposed Tibetan activist, who happens to be a dead
ringer for Gompo.
Dolkar
starts following Dolkar out of anger and suspicion. As a result, she will
witness the visit he receives from two thuggish agents of the Mainland
government. However, there will be more to the story of the man who is probably
Gompo than she realizes.
Sweet Requiem is one of the rare
films that works equally well as a thriller, a tragedy, and an advocacy film.
An enormous amount of credit goes to Tenzin Dolker, who is absolutely
extraordinary as Dolkar. She lights up the screen, but she is also arrestingly
vulnerable and messily complicated, in an acutely human kind of way.
Veteran
Tibetan actor Jampa Kalsang Tamang is really just as haunting as Gompo in
flashbacks and the guilt-wracked shell of a man Dolker intends to confront. It
is not a flashy performance, but it connects on a gut level. Shavo Dorjee also
helps keep the film grounded in reality as his namesake, a Tibetan refugee
activist, who carries a torch for Dolkar.