SXSW ’25: Mola

Kunsang Wangmo turned 100 in 2015. If Tibetan Buddhist nun had not left Tibet shortly after the CCP’s occupation, she probably would not have survived to 50. However, reaching her centennial made her keenly aware of her mortality. She wished to return home for her death and reincarnation, but the Beijing regime strictly controls access to the captive Tibetan nation. Her granddaughter and Swiss son-in-law document her preparation for her final journeys. One will only be a matter of time, but they hope she can also make the arduous trek back to Lhasa before that happens in Yangzom & Martin Brauen’s Mola: A Tibetan Tale of Love and Loss, which screens during the 2025 SXSW Film Festival.

Most of her family and the Tibetan community in Switzerland simply know her as “Mola,” or grandmother. She has lived in the land of neutrality with her daughter, artist Sonam Dola Brauen and her son-in-law Martin for forty-five years. First, she and Sonam Dola fled through India, where her daughter eventually met Brauen, who was doing field work in Mussoorie.

Clearly, the mother-daughter relationship has its share of stresses and strains. That happens to most people, even if those who need not adjust to life in exile. However, her son-in-law always seems to maintain good terms with “Mola,” while granddaughter, director-thesp Yangzom, never directly appears on-camera.

Regardless, Mola appears quite spry and alert for her age and she largely maintains a healthy spirit. According to her own testimony, her faith helps sustain her. Still, it is hard to get around the significance of her approaching milestone. Switzerland’s neutrality ought to make her visa application easier, but her history obviously raises many red flags (so to speak).

The Brauens mostly focus on Mola as she comes to terms with the inevitable. However, they periodically incorporate grim newsreel footage of the death and destruction the CCP wreaked across Tibet, so viewers fully understand why she had to leave in the first place. It is very helpful context in this era of short attention spans and historical illiteracy.

For the most part, Mola is an acutely personal film. In many ways, it is also deeply sad. Arguably, it echoes Thomas Wolfe’s famous words, “you can’t go home again,” but maybe not precisely in the way you might expect. Mola was neither conceived or executed as an expose, but it still exposes the cruelty of the Beijing regime. Regardless, it is well-worth meeting Kunsang Wangmo and her family, who are all quite learned and accomplished. Highly recommended, Mola screens again today (3/10) and tomorrow (3/11) during this year’s SXSW.