Silent Holy Stones

Silent Holy Stones

2005. China. Written and directed by Pema Tseden. It happens in just 48 hours: “Little Lama,” a 10-year-old Tibetan boy who’s training to become a monk, returns home for New Year’s celebrations. After a long journey on horseback over icy steppes, he finds solace in his family’s new TV, and is unable to pull himself away from serials of Buddhist stories. “You dream too much for a young monk,” his family tells him, and they’re right: the more he watches, the more it becomes clear that there’s no going back to his religious practices. An official selection of the Pusan International Film Festival, the International Buddhist Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. In Tibetan, Chinese; English subtitles. 102 min.