Karmapa - Two Ways of Divinity

Apart from the exiled Dalai Lama, who is living in India, Tibetan Buddhism has various other spiritual leaders. One of them is the leader of the Karmapa sect, whose birth was already predicted by the first Buddha, Siddharta Gautama. When the sixteenth reincarnation of the Karmapa leader has died in the United States in 1981, monks start a search for the next reincarnation. Ten years later, representatives of the Chinese government in Tibet say they have found him, but an alternative candidate is pushed forward in India. This is the onset of a fierce political sparring. All in all, the production of this double portrait of both hallowed youngsters took six years. Prior to the shooting period from 1994 to 1997, director Arto Halonen (1964) had to wait for three years for permission by the Chinese authorities to film in Tibet, but he concealed the fact that the Dalai Lama and the second intended Karmapa leader, also living in exile in India, would be in his film, too.