Karma, a Tibetan filmmaker from New York, goes to Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's exile headquarters in northern India, to make a documentary about former political prisoners who have escaped from Tibet. She wants to reconnect with her roots but is also escaping a deteriorating relationship back home.
One of Karma's interviewees is Dhondup, an enigmatic ex-monk who has just escaped from Tibet. He confides in her that his real reason for coming to India is to fulfil his dying mother's last wish, to deliver a charm box to a long-missing resistance fighter. Karma finds herself unwittingly falling in love with Dhondup even as she is sucked into the passion of his quest, which becomes a journey into Tibet's fractured past and a voyage of self-discovery.
Dreaming Lhasa is the first dramatic feature film by documentary filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam. It is also the first internationally recognised feature film by a Tibetan to explore the contemporary reality of Tibet. Although the film is set among the exile community in India the story it tells has resonances beyond just the Tibetan experience; it touches upon the larger questions of cultural identity, dislocation and loss that are very much a part of today's post-modern world.
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