State of Statelessness: Tibetan filmmaking collective presents a moving study of exile

How does a filmmaker represent the life of a dispersed people? The anthology film State of Statelessness (2024), presented by the Drung Tibetan Filmmakers’ Collective, attempts to do just this with a collection of four short films from the global Tibetan diaspora that capture the unique reality of its people geographically, politically, and culturally. Using four stories from around the world, these Tibetan filmmakers weave carefully chosen details throughout narratives of absence and death to create a work that is philosophically and, at times, spiritually profound. 

State of Statelessness begins with Tsering Tashi Gyalthang’s Where the River Ends, which follows a Tibetan man and his daughter as they travel down the Mekong River. The river, which flows from Tibet to Vietnam, takes on strong metaphorical importance with its source representing where Pala, the father, was born. But the film’s initial understanding of the river’s beginning and end changes in its gentle conclusion when daughter teaches father about the water cycle, wherein water evaporates only to rain down somewhere else, replenishing the source. A discussion of the river earlier in the film mentions China by name (the only time this occurs in State of Statelessness), its intervention on the flow of the Mekong and its damaging effects. This provides perhaps the film’s most poignant metaphorical and political insight – the river might be damned but the history and spirit of the Tibetan people continues on.    

In the film’s next part, Bhardo, two sisters are seen cremating their recently deceased mother. To ensure a good outcome for her soul, an astrologer tells the family that one of the sisters cannot be present for the cremation, and this only exacerbates preexisting issues stemming from migration. The emotionally candid film explores the tension between adherence to tradition and personal fulfilment using a gracefully understated style, offering State of Statelessness’s psychologically darkest and most visually austere chapter.  

Little Cloud follows a painter and his wife who have lost their young daughter. They are given a glimpse of what life abroad might have to offer when the painter’s bullish former classmate visits from the US. At the End the Rain, the film’s final and best chapter, reveals a young man traveling from the U.S. to India to spread his father’s ashes. The section is patient and delicate, with an impressive performance from its young leads. Here, the film introduces a mysteriously inconclusive narrative element that reiterates State of Statelessness’s broader theme: the politically unresolved plight of an indominable people. 

► State of Statelessness is out now