A Poet at Heart

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Culture Documentary hosted by Marc Carpentier, published by NHK broadcasted as part of NHK Inside Lens series in 2018 - English narration

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Sonam was born with a romantic personality, spiritually-led to dedicate to Tibetan Buddhism. He entered Serthar Buddhist Academy, the biggest Buddhist Academy in the world at the age of six, and vowed there to be a monk for life. In the Academy, Sonam has created many beautiful poems about life and death, spirituality and the Buddhist practice. The poems are also his venue to express desires and freedom he’s now allowed to have. As China changes rapidly, his brief encounters with the profit-driven mainstream society have planted seeds of disturbance in his life. And he also struggles with a temptation for romance as his childhood sweetheart persists to express love to him. Sonam quits his religious life and gets together with a girl who has waited for him for 17 years. Seemingly relieved to embrace the affection, Sonam has to face the pressure from the community towards his secularization and devastation he’s caused on the family. In order to sustain a new life with his now fiance, Sonam now becomes a businessman who runs a printing and translation shop with a staff of Tibetan lamas. As a Lama and poet, Sonam has made all the queries that have not found a solution; now a worldly man and merchant, the situation can only complicate. Film by Shiwei Kang.