Tibetan filmmaker receives rapturous applause at Berlin festival

Lhapal Gyal’s visit to Berlin last month was a first in more ways than one. The director was there to present his first full-length feature at the German capital’s annual film festival. It was also the first time the 28-year-old has attended such an event outside China. In fact, the trip was his first outside China full stop.

At its world premiere, on February 20, Wangdrak’s Rain Boots nearly filled the famed Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s 1,021-seat auditori­um. Admittedly, schoolchildren formed a significant part of the audience (the film was part of the Berlinale’s youth-oriented Generation section), but the rapturous reception was very real.

When we meet at a cafe on bustling shop­ping street Kurfürstendamm a few hours after the premiere, Lhapal Gyal says he is pleased with the response to his modest production. Set in a small Tibetan village in Qinghai province and revolving around a first-grader’s struggle to get a pair of rubber boots, and then his desperate wait for the weather to change so he can wear them, the film was made on a budget of just 3 million yuan (US$472,000), with a shoot lasting under three weeks, the director says.

He used a skeleton crew and cast non-professional actors in local auditions.