July 2015
Miss Tibet follows Tibetan-American teenager Tenzin Khecheo as she competes in the finals of the 2011 Miss Tibet pageant in Dharamsala. Born in India and raised in Minnesota, Khecheo is a third-generation Tibetan in exile. A year after the death of her father, she enters the Miss Tibet competition in his memory, and in the hope of raising awareness for the Tibetan cause. When she arrives in India, she meets five other contestants from as far away as Australia and Switzerland, including a computer scientist, an MBA graduate, an accountant, and a nurse. The young women visit the Tibetan Parliament and take lessons in Tibetan music, language, and culture.They attend a public talk by the Dalai Lama,and have a moving meeting with Ama Adhe, an ex-political prisoner who spent a third of her life in a Chinese prison and watched 296 of the women imprisoned with her starve to death. The film explores the emotional upheaval of a high-stakes competition in which the criteria for winning are vague at best, and at worst perhaps rigged. What emerges is a compelling portrait of a bright young woman who longs to maintain her Tibetan identity and help her people.