Director: Sam Wangyal | Producer: Sam Wangyal Genre: Documentary | Produced In: 2009 | Country: United Kingdom
Synopsis: "I Am Pema" is a film that paints a lyrical reflection on displacement and hope, glimpsed during a day in little Pema’s world. It was her parents' wish to achieve better things for their children through an education that respects their language and cultural identity at perhaps at the cost of never seeing her again. They wanted at least one of their children to have a future under the Dalai Lama’s care. Four years ago, thirty-nine Tibetan children trekked over the Himalayas forced to flee their oppressed homeland to seek freedom in exile. One of them was Pema, then only seven years old. Though displaced, she is full of happy optimism tinged with sadness because she remembers her parents every day. But she says she is happy now showing remarkable strength in settling into a strange new world in a new country with new parents making new friends and discoveries along the way. Of course a return to Tibet is unthinkable!
She's young. She's beautiful. She's smart. Christina Chan is emerging as the new face of Hong Kong's increasingly disaffected. For Hong Kong's scandal-driven media, 22-year-old Chan offers a prism through which to view the increasingly angry "post-80s generation." Yet it's a shoe that doesn't quite fit, says Chan. The graduate student in philosophy agrees that dissatisfaction in the former British colony is on the rise. But she insists the backlash on the streets is not just coming from young people. "This is not a generational war," she says. Frustrations are brewing among a large swath of Hong Kong society including rural dwellers, middle-aged workers and teens who want their voices to be heard, says Chan. "People are getting angrier and angrier," she says. According to Chan, citizens' rage is fueled by the government's failure to deliver on its promise of democracy and its growing heavy-handedness in dealing with protests.
