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Deepest Condolence for Director Pema Tseden
Renowned Tibetan director Pema Tseden died of illness at the age of 53.
  Pema Tseden
Pema Tseden was a contemporary Tibetan director, screenwriter, producer and writer with widest attention. He started his filmmaking career from literature.
He published a piece of literary works in 1991, and won multiple literary awards. After he graduated from a master’s program at the Northwest Minzu University in 2002, Pema Tseden further studied at the Department of Literature, Beijing Film Academy, thus getting involved in films. In the same year, his debut short film The Silent Holy Stones, written and directed by him, won the Outstanding Drama Short Film in the professional division of the Short Film Competition Section of the 4th Beijing College Student Film Festival and Outstanding Film at the 1st Golden Character Award of the Beijing Film Academy. He adapted and extended the short film into his first feature film in 2005, and won the Best Debut Film Award at the 25th Golden Rooster Awards.
Pema Tseden directed many documentaries and feature films about Tibet from 2007 to 2014, which won nominations at multiple domestic and international film festivals and awards. The audience at home and abroad gradually get to know a different Tibet through his cameras.
The Tharlo written and directed by him in 2015 won multiple film titles, for which film Pema Tseden was hailed by film fans as an indispensable director, and recognized as a leader in the Tibet New Wave by film critics.
The film Jinpa, written and directed by him in 2018, won the Best Screenplay in the Horizons section at the 75th Venice Film Festival. In 2019, he wrote and directed the Balloon, which was once again nominated for the Horizons section at the Venice Film Festival.
  Filming site of the Jinpa
Pema Tseden was also an old friend of the Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF), and he’d been to the BJIFF in various roles. At the 13th BJIFF that just closed at the end of April, he chaired the international jury of the Forward Future Section and presented awards to young filmmakers.
 Pema Tseden, international jury president of the Forward Future Section,
 addresses the Forward Future Honorary Award Ceremony on April 27
We were looking forward to meeting him again at the BJIFF next time, but the brief farewell became permanent parting.
He just finished the filming of his new works Singpangtra this March. Those whom the God loves die young. He still had so many ideas and concepts yet to be realized. But he passed away suddenly. Just like the title of his short story collection Stories Half Told published in 2022, his lifetime story came to a sudden end in the middle. The other half will have to be replenished by retrospect of his previous works. Nevertheless, his literary works and film career stand timeless.