Cinema as Dharma: The Tricycle Buddhist Film Festival 2026 Brings Sacred Stories to the Screen
In an era where digital noise often drowns out the contemplative voice, a quiet revolution is unfolding on screen. The Tricycle Buddhist Film Festival 2026, now streaming through the month of June, presents an extraordinary lineup of feature and short films that explore the deepest questions of identity, exile, spiritual inheritance, and the delicate dance between tradition and modernity. More than a film festival, this is an invitation to witness dharma through the lens of cinema.
Curated by Shrihari Sathe, this year's program brings together stories from across the Buddhist world — from the monasteries of Nepal and the Himalayan foothills of India to the kingdom of Bhutan and the Tibetan diaspora in Europe and America. Each film serves as a living archive of Buddhist thought, revealing how ancient wisdom continues to pulse through contemporary storytelling.
Among the feature films is Yuqi Kang's deeply moving documentary A Little Wisdom, which follows five-year-old Hopakuli, an orphaned monk in Lumbini, Nepal — the birthplace of the Buddha. Kang's lens captures the raw, unfiltered world of childhood within the regimented walls of monastic life, where imagination becomes the ultimate escape. It is a tender meditation on innocence, discipline, and the universal truths of youth that transcend any single tradition.
Luc Schaedler's Angry Monk offers a radically different portrait — that of Gendun Choephel, a reincarnated lama who abandoned monastic life in 1934 to embrace the modern world. A rebel, a drinker, a free spirit far ahead of his time, Choephel's story dismantles easy stereotypes of what a Tibetan Buddhist monk should be. His life becomes a beacon for those who seek spiritual truth outside the lines of orthodoxy.
From Bhutan comes Dechen Roder's I, the Song, a mesmerizing film about a school teacher who journeys south in search of her doppelganger — only to become entangled in the mystery of a stolen sacred song. Winner of international acclaim, this 2024 feature explores the collision of digital culture with living tradition, and asks what is lost when ancient songs disappear from communal memory.
Jennifer Fox's My Reincarnation, filmed over twenty years, offers an intimate portrait of Tibetan master Chögyal Namkhai Norbu and his Western-born son Yeshi, who was recognized as the reincarnation of a famous teacher. The film captures a decades-long drama of a father trying to pass on a threatened spiritual legacy to a son drawn to the modern world — a story of love, adaptation, and the precarious future of lineage.
The short film program is equally rich. Butterfly Bhutan tells the story of a man who notices that prayer flags are slowly strangling the trees they are tied to, and his quiet campaign to correct a well-meaning tradition that has drifted from its purpose. Yarne, set during a six-week period of monastic confinement in Nepal, follows two young monks who navigate friendship and bullying with the simple dream of buying a soccer ball.
Hiraeth — a Welsh word for a longing for a home that no longer exists — follows filmmaker Kunga Choephel returning to his hometown in India after eight years in America, only to find it transformed. And Lobsang on Camera explores the tender relationship between a filmmaker and her uncle, a young monk at Drepung Monastery, built entirely through the act of being filmed.
What makes this festival remarkable is not merely the quality of the films, but the underlying thesis they collectively propose: that cinema itself can be a vehicle for contemplation, a mirror for the mind, and a compassionate witness to the human condition. In Buddhist terms, these films do not simply entertain — they point the way.
For those unable to attend a physical festival, Tricycle has made the entire program available to stream online through June 30, 2026. It is a rare opportunity to sit with these stories in the quiet of one's own home, allowing each frame to become an invitation to see more clearly, feel more deeply, and understand more fully.
In a world saturated with content, the Tricycle Buddhist Film Festival offers something increasingly precious — the chance to watch with intention, and to let what we see change us.
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