Drung co-founder and filmmaker Tenzin Tsetan Choklay speaks to viet film festival
Published by Communication Specialist, viet film festival on October 1, 2025
Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association (VAALA)
Viet Film Fest is the largest Vietnamese film festival in the diaspora.
State of Statelessness is an anthology film consisting of four short films made by Tibetan filmmakers living in exile. It is a collective effort of exploring the themes of statelessness and migration embedded within everyday life of the Tibetan diaspora. In this interview, Tenzin Tsetan Choklay (producer and co-director) talks about the structure and mission of the Drung Tibetan Filmmakers Collective, as well as the film’s journey from its initial seed to full fruition. Tsering Tashi Gyalthang (co-director) reflects on his experiences of directing the first segment, sharing both onscreen meditations on environmental issues and offscreen moments of inspiration with the filmmaking team.
Interviewees: Tenzin Tsetan Choklay, Producer, co-director of State of Statelessness; Tsering Tashi Gyalthang, co-director of State of Statelessness
Interviewer: Xiangu Qi
The project was produced by the Drung Tibetan Filmmakers Collective based in the Tibetan diaspora community of Dharamsala. Could you share some behind-the-scenes insights into how the collective operates—particularly in terms of collaboration, fundraising, and international distribution?
Tenzin: Drung is a young collective I co-founded with fellow filmmakers Tenzin Kalden and Sonam Tseten, with the goal of advancing storytelling within Tibetan exile communities. At its core, the collective functions as a mutual support system – providing a space for filmmakers to share resources, exchange expertise, and help one another bring projects to life. Beyond producing films, we are committed to nurturing a wider community of Tibetan storytellers through workshops, mentorships, screenings, and educational initiatives. Everyone in the collective works on a voluntary basis, which means that any funding we receive goes directly into supporting projects and programs.
For State of Statelessness, we were fortunate to have the support of our executive producer, Yodon Thonden, with whom I had previously collaborated, and our partner The Tibet Fund, which for the first time stepped into film production. Beyond this, most of our work is sustained by small but meaningful contributions from Tibetan community members around the world – acts of solidarity that keep our projects alive. In terms of international reach, our approach has been organic: rather than pursuing traditional distribution models, we’ve relied on networks of film festivals, cultural organizations, and diaspora communities to create visibility for our work. This grassroots mode of operation reflects both our limitations and our strengths—it keeps us closely connected to the communities we represent, while also allowing our stories to travel across borders.
State of Statelessness is a transborder, transnational, and transcultural production. How did the project evolve from its initial concept into a completed film?
Tenzin: Drung is a filmmakers’ collective rooted in the exile Tibetan community of Dharamshala (in India). The seed of this project was planted during conversations with the late Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, who directed Snow Leopard (2023), Balloon (2019), Jinpa (2018), and Tharlo (2015) while he was in New York. Through those exchanges, as well as through ongoing dialogue with Tibetans living inside occupied Tibet, we came to recognize a profound curiosity they hold about life in exile – particularly in India. Tibetans inside Tibet often wonder how those of us in exile live our everyday lives: what challenges we face, how we sustain our identity in foreign lands, and how we continue to navigate being Tibetan in countries that are not our own. Their questions span from the intimate to the expansive: what dreams we carry, what work sustains us, what food we eat, what music and films we enjoy, what clothes we wear, and even what keeps us awake at night.
We also came to the realization that, despite having preserved our Tibetan-ness over decades of exile, we have not successfully shared these lived experiences with our brothers and sisters inside Tibet – neither through books, music, art, nor cinema. This realization gave rise to the idea of creating a film that would offer a window into our lives in exile, and in doing so, begin to build a bridge between the two worlds of Tibetans inside Tibet and those living in exile.
The film brings together four filmmaking teams in India, Vietnam, and the United States. Could you describe how these teams collaborated throughout the production process? How were the segments integrated into a cohesive whole?
Tenzin: With the core idea of telling stories about the lived experiences of Tibetans in exile, our collective reached out to Tibetan filmmakers working in different parts of the world. Since we are only a handful at the moment, we initially brought together five filmmakers, each tasked with creating a story around statelessness and migration within Tibetan exile communities. One of them, a female filmmaker, eventually withdrew to pursue her own film, leaving four segments that ultimately shaped State of Statelessness.
From the outset, we deliberately kept the directive open-ended, giving each filmmaker full creative freedom to pursue their vision. Each was provided with a very modest budget and a fixed timeline—two of the biggest constraints of the production. Despite these limitations, Drung, as a collective, remained actively engaged, supporting each project from the script stage to final post-production and helping filmmakers navigate the challenges of working under such restrictions. Initially, we explored ways of imposing a more structured framework to tie the stories together. But when all the scripts came in, we discovered a natural progression and resonance among them, allowing the anthology to form an organic cohesion without heavy-handed editorial intervention. Throughout the process, regular Zoom calls and meetings across time zones ensured that collaboration remained smooth, even across continents and despite limited resources.
As a multilingual film, how did the filmmaking teams approach the casting process across different linguistic and cultural contexts (Tibetan, Vietnamese, English, and Hindi)?
Tenzin: We gave each of the commissioned filmmakers complete freedom to handle casting in the way that best suited their stories. This allowed the process to reflect the diversity of the contexts in which the films were made. The result was inspired choices – from talented Vietnamese actors who brought depth to their roles, to Tibetan performers whose lived experiences informed their portrayals.
We also remain deeply indebted to our non-Tibetan collaborators, particularly the Indian technicians and artists in Mumbai – such as Rajesh Thanickan our Post-Production Producer, Bridge Postworks, Aural Mayhem Studio and Harkat Studios—whose expertise and dedication were instrumental in bringing the project to life. Their contributions underscore the truly transnational and transcultural spirit of the film.
