Directed by Lana Wilson

87 min / 2017 / USA

Ittetsu Nemoto, a former punk-turned-Buddhist-priest in Japan, has made a career out of helping suicidal people find reasons to live. But this work has come increasingly at the cost of his own family and health, as he refuses to draw lines between those he counsels and himself. The Departure captures Nemoto at a crossroads, when his growing self-destructive tendencies lead him to confront the same question his patients ask him: what makes life worth living?

The second documentary by award-winning director Lana Wilson (After Tiller), The Departure is a poetic and deeply moving film that contemplates death as a way of better understanding how we should live.

Directed by Ella Manzheeva

77 min / 2022

Geshe Wangyal. With Blessing of the Three Jewels is a dramatic story about the incredible earthly and spiritual journey of a Buddhist monk from Russia, who became one of the first preachers of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States. In 1923, as a young man, he left his home and spent over 30 years in Tibet and India, attaining the Buddhist degree of Geshe. He was a friend of the Dalai Lama and taught at Columbia University, dedicated his life to putting the Buddha’s teachings into practice, and trained many talented students, increasing interest in Buddhism in the West.

Directed by Yeshe Hegan

93 min / 2020 / New Zealand

Return to Gandhi Road tells the powerful story of Kangyur Rinpoche,a renowned Tibetan Master. Heeding the imminent danger of the 1950’s Cultural Revolution, and under the instructions of the Dalai Lama, Rinpoche braved the dangerous journey over the Himalayan mountains to India where he rescued two tons of Buddhist texts that otherwise faced potential extinction. The journey took over three years, was undertaken on foot accompanied by his young family, and involved immense physical hardship. Once in Darjeeling he built Orgyen Kunsang Chokhorling, a Monastery at 54 Gandhi Road. It was at this address that a handful of single-minded Westerners, in search of a more meaningful life, began to arrive in the late 1960’s. Their meeting, although brief with Rinpoche’s passing in 1975, eventually had an extraordinary widespread effect and directly contributed to Buddhism’s spread throughout the Western world. Told through the eyes of New Zealander Kim Hegan, who was one of those first Westerners, more than 40 years after Rinpoche’s passing and his Buddhist practice abandoned, Return to Gandhi Road re-traces the journey he made to Darjeeling 46 years ago, to tell Rinpoche’s profound story, while healing the trauma that kept him away for so long.

Directed by Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam

91 min / 2018 / India, USA

Dolkar, a 26-year-old exile Tibetan, lives in Delhi. Eighteen years ago, she escaped from Tibet with her father, making a perilous trek across the Himalayas that ended in tragedy. Dolkar has suppressed all recollection of that traumatic incident. But when she unexpectedly encounters Gompo, the guide who abandoned them during their journey, memories of her escape are reignited and she is propelled on an obsessive search for retribution and closure. Flashbacks of her desperate journey with a small group through a harsh and desolate Himalayan terrain punctuate her growing predicament in the present as she follows Gompo through the claustrophobic alleys of the Tibetan refugee colony in Delhi. The two stories moving in tandem, both determined by a series of fateful choices, reach their conclusion as Dolkar and Gompo finally confront each other.

Directed by Donagh Coleman

90 min / 2022 / Finland

Most of us think of death as something clear-cut, and that medical science has it neatly figured out. This feature documentary explodes such assumptions through its exploration of a phenomenon that blurs life and death to an unprecedented degree. In what Tibetan Buddhists call tukdam, advanced meditators die in a consciously controlled manner. Though dead according to our biomedical standards, they often stay sitting upright in meditation; remarkably, their bodies remain fresh and lifelike, without signs of decay for days, sometimes weeks after clinical death. Following ground-breaking scientific research into tukdam and taking us into intimate death stories of Tibetan meditators, the film juxtaposes scientific and Tibetan perspectives as it tries to unravel the mystery of tukdam.

Directed by Moe Myat May Zarchi

10 min / 2023 / Myanmar

A Buddhist fable-like story about the guilt of a childhood incident of killing an ant while washing hands in the sink. Animated through photographic sequences painted with golds and grays, the Zen-like visuals sweep into one another with whispering monologues and glitching noises reflecting the realms of cosmos, power, guilt, prayers, and existence.

Directed by Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam

17 min /2017

The one-channel video installation weaves together vignettes from the everyday life of Namdol Lhamo, an anonymous exile living in Brussels who happens to be one of the famous Singing Nuns of Drapchi, a group of nuns imprisoned in Tibet in the early 1990s for peacefully demonstrating against Chinese rule. Namdol Lhamo’s sentence, along with that of her companions, was further increased when they were discovered to be secretly recording protest songs in Drapchi Prison and smuggling the tapes to the outside world. She spent a total of 12 years in prison.

Directed by Erika Houle

12 min / 2023 / USA

Dust to Light is a short documentary about what is really going on under the surface when we are cleaning. The film listens as four Zen practitioners reflect on the transformative process of cleaning when it is approached as a meditation rather than burdensome chore.

Directed by Ray Choo

45 min / 2021 / Singapore, Malaysia, China, Germany

What is Buddhism? A deceptively simple question contemplated through diverse perspectives and stories of Ani Pema Deki (Emma Slade), the first western woman to be ordained in Bhutan, Kodo Nishimura, a Buddhist monk, LGBT activist and make-up artist and Prof. Daniel Veidlinger, Professor of Buddhism, in the Department of Comparative Religion and Humanities at California State University, Chico. A documentary film completed during the Covid pandemic as the graduation project of Communications Design student Ray Choo at the University of Applied Sciences, Berlin (HTW).

Directed by Sunil Gurung

10 min / 2023

Sonam has returned from the US after 20 years. He brings along his estranged son, Karma, to visit the ancestral monasteries located in high altitude of Manang Village and perform the religious ritual of lighting Butter Lamps – as a rite of passage for his deceased wife. On their journey through the difficult terrains amidst mountain wind, Sonam tries to befriend his son but Karma keeps his distance and resents Sonam for being an absent father.

Live Screening on Saturday, March 16, 2024 at 12:00 P.M. ET

87 min / 2017 / USA

Ittetsu Nemoto, a former punk-turned-Buddhist-priest in Japan, has made a career out of helping suicidal people find reasons to live. But this work has come increasingly at the cost of his own family and health, as he refuses to draw lines between those he counsels and himself. The Departure captures Nemoto at a crossroads, when his growing self-destructive tendencies lead him to confront the same question his patients ask him: what makes life worth living?

The second documentary by award-winning director Lana Wilson (After Tiller), The Departure is a poetic and deeply moving film that contemplates death as a way of better understanding how we should live.

Saturday, March 16, 2024 at 1:30 P.M. ET

Lana Wilson is an Emmy-winning and two-time Spirit Award-nominated director and writer. Wilson makes films that use real people and situations to create transformative cinematic experiences. Her work includes After Tiller, an Emmy-winning feature documentary about the four most-targeted abortion doctors in America; The Departure, a Spirit Award-nominated feature documentary about a punk-turned-priest who helps people find reasons to live; and Miss Americana, a critically acclaimed documentary about global icon Taylor Swift. Wilson’s latest film, the two-part documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Directing for a Documentary.

Koshin Paley Ellison is a Soto Zen Teacher, Co-Guiding Teacher of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, and author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up.