Pema Tseden

Pema Tseden (Tibetan: པད་མ་ཚེ་བརྟན།, Wylie: pad ma tshe brtan), also called Wanma Tsaidan (simplified Chinese: 万玛才旦; traditional Chinese: 萬瑪才旦; pinyin: Wàn mǎ cái dàn; born December 1969), is a Tibetan film director and screenwriter of Chinese citizenship. He is a member of the China Film Directors' Guild, China Film Association and Chinese Film Literature Association.

Early life and education

Pema Tseden was born into a pastoral family, in Guide County, Qinghai, in December 1969, during the Cultural Revolution. He is the only one of three siblings to have finished school. He graduated from Northwest University for Nationalities, where he majored in Tibetan Language and Literature. After graduation, he worked as a primary school teacher and a civil servant. Then he pursued advanced studies at China's most prestigious film school, Beijing Film Academy, where he became the Academy's first-ever Tibetan student.

Career

Pema Tseden's debut work, The Silent Holy Stones, won the Best Directorial Debut at the 25th Golden Rooster Awards, Asian New Talent Award for Best Director at the 9th Shanghai International Film Festival, Special Jury Award at the 8th Changchun Film Festival, and Best First Feature at the 13th Beijing College Student Film Festival.

In 2009, Soul Searching won the Special Jury Award at the 12th Shanghai International Film Festival and was nominated for Golden Goblet Award.

Tharlo, a film adaptation based on the novel of the same name by himself, won the Best Adapted Screenplay at the 52nd Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards, it also prizes in the 23rd Beijing College Student Film Festival, and the film was nominated for Golden Lion at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.

Two colleagues reported that Pema Tseden had been detained at Qinghai airport by police in late June 2016 and was hospitalised after having been subjected to all-night interrogation.