Tibet Film Festival Zurich 2025: Celebrating Tibetan Stories Across Borders

I am still reflecting on the wonderful time I had in Zurich at the Tibet Film Festival, thanks to the Tibetan organizers who have nurtured this event since 2009. This was my first time attending, and I had the honor of moderating a discussion with filmmaker Tenzin Tsetan Choklay about his collaborative work State of Statelessness.

What I did not expect was how the theme of statelessness became an avenue for learning about the Swiss Tibetan community. Switzerland was the first country in the West to welcome Tibetan refugees after the Chinese invasion and the Tibetan exodus. Over the decades, Tibetans built a life and community there, passing down resilience, culture, and identity across generations.

To see their children and grandchildren now leading and organizing a film festival that celebrates Tibetan creativity — both inside Tibet and across the diaspora — was deeply moving.

The festival itself was founded to honor the courage of Dhondup Wangchen, who was imprisoned after filming Leaving Fear Behind, a documentary that gave Tibetans inside Tibet a chance to speak about their lives under Chinese oppression.

Since then, the Tibet Film Festival has grown into a vibrant platform where Tibetan filmmakers and creatives share stories through their own lenses, grounded in lived experiences. Over time, it has expanded beyond Zurich to Dharamsala (India), London (UK), and Berlin (Germany), reflecting the global reach of the Tibetan diaspora.

This year, I witnessed films and live music that brought diasporic Tibetan life into focus, showing how identity, memory, and community endure in distinct ways across the world. The festival has become more than an event — it is a space where Tibetans, friends of Tibet, and movie lovers come together to share stories, histories, and futures.

I am deeply grateful to the organizers for the invitation and for the chance to connect not only with the films but with the people who bring this diasporic space to life. I felt the weight of generational history as well as the love and commitment that sustain it.

What a meaningful way to engage with the Tibetan community in Switzerland — and a powerful reminder of how storytelling sustains people, their culture, and their resilience across borders.

This journey continues at the London edition of the Tibet Film Festival (31 October – 2 November), where I will introduce the film State of Statelessness and lead a storytelling workshop — another opportunity to celebrate Tibetan creativity and the power of stories to connect us across generations and geographies.