The Sweet Requiem

Film | 2018 | narrative feature | 91 minutes

Director: Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam

Writer: Tenzing Sonam

Producer: Ritu Sarin

Producer: Shrihari Sathe

Executive Producers: Yodon Thonden, Vishwanath Alluri, Francesca von Habsburg

Director of Photography: David McFarland

Editor: Jabeen Merchant

Production Designer: Aradhana Seth

Original Music: Michael Montes

Costume Designer: Himani Dehlvi

Make-Up Designer: Dhananjay M. Prajapati

Associate Producer: Rajesh Thanickan

Associate Director: Sonam Tseten

with

Tenzin Dolker

Jampa Kalsang

Rabyoung Thonden Gyalkhang

Shavo Dorjee

Tenzin Dechen

Tenzin Phuntsok

Lhakpa Tsering

Tsetun Dolma

photo: Pablo Bartholomew

Dolkar is a 25-year-old Tibetan woman living in Delhi. 15 years ago, she escaped from Tibet with her father, making a perilous trek across the Himalayas. Since then she has suppressed all recollection of that traumatic journey. But when Dolkar unexpectedly encounters Gompo, the guide who led them from Tibet only to abandon them before they crossed the final pass to freedom, memories of her escape are reignited and she is propelled on an obsessive search for reconciliation and closure. Following Gompo obsessively through the narrow alleys of Majnu ka Tila, the Tibetan refugee colony in North Delhi, she is sucked into his strange and solitary existence. Flashbacks of her desperate journey with a small group through a harsh and desolate Himalayan terrain punctuate Dolkar’s growing predicament in the present as Gompo turns out not to be who she always imagined him to be. Caught up in a web of political intrigue that is much larger than her personal quest, Dolkar must now reconcile Gompo’s act of treachery that has haunted her all her life with the life-or-death situation he now faces. The two stories moving in tandem, one inexorably forwards in the present, the other unexpectedly backwards in time, both determined by a series of fateful choices, reaches its conclusion as Dolkar and Gompo finally confront each other and the source of Dolkar’s long-buried anguish is revealed.

“Intensely personal and emphatically universal filmmaking.” – Hollywood Reporter

“The film puts its points across with a delicacy and sobriety rare in moviemaking.” – The New York Times

“…a taut, lyrical story…unfolding like a slow-burn thriller…” – Film Threat

“…a powerfully poetic film, one of lush photography and subtle direction…” – CriterionCast

“The Sweet Requiem, in a way, holds the burning match of a global crisis, a spiritual crisis, to us…” – Bomb Magazine

Selected Film Festivals and Screenings:

World Premiere: 2018 Toronto International Film Festival

2018.

Mill Valley Film Festival

Dharamshala International Film Festival

Hawaii International Film Festival

Kolkata International Film Festival (NETPAC Award)