A review of FAR FROM HOME, a documentary by Kristi Tethong
by Jamyang Norbu
How does one retrieve, or rather resurrect, the fading memories of an old man with Alzheimer’s? Especially when those memories reach back to Tibet before the Chinese invasion, to refugees trudging across the Himalayas into India, and to the years he spent helping the Dalai Lama save and educate refugee children and resettle their parents in camps in South India?
That is the task filmmaker Kristi Tethong takes on in Far From Home, a feature documentary filmed over twenty years. She draws on rediscovered family archives, faded photographs, old home movies, documentary footage and interviews to tell, piece by piece, the story of her late father-in-law, T.C. (Tsewang Chogyal) Tethong.
We first see T.C. from behind, sitting on a couch in a dim, lamp-lit living room, his grey head turned away from us. Then the film cuts to old Tibet before the invasion: his family home in Shigatse, and blurred black-and-white photographs of his father and mother.
T.C. was born to the Tibetan minister Gyurme Gyatso and Dolma Tsering. Both died when he was a small boy, and his older siblings raised him. He later studied at St. Joseph’s College (North Point) in Darjeeling. When the Tibetan Uprising broke out in March 1959, the Dalai Lama escaped to India, and tens of thousands of Tibetans followed him into exile. T.C.’s older brother, the head of the Tethong family, sent him to serve the Dalai Lama. He was one of the few Tibetans who spoke both English and Hindi, so his first job was to act as go-between for the arriving refugees, Indian officials and relief workers.
When that work was done, T.C. was transferred to Dharamshala to assist the Dalai Lama and translate for him. Meanwhile, thousands of Tibetan children whose parents were working in road-construction camps were being gathered into the Tibetan nursery in Dharamshala. One of the foreign volunteers there was Judy Pullen, a young Canadian teacher with Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO). She first cared for the refugee children. Then, at the Dalai Lama’s request, she helped set up a teacher-training program for Tibetan monks, who would go on to teach in schools and settlements.
T.C. was next assigned to establish a large agricultural settlement at Mundgod in Karnataka, where the Government of India had granted a vast tract of jungle. He married Judy, and together they began an extraordinary life in that wilderness.
From here the film moves easily between three times and places. There is footage of the first rough clearings of the jungle settlement. There is the Tethong family, with their three grown children, revisiting present-day Mundgod. And there is the family’s lake house in Canada, where an aging T.C., with visible effort, tells his grandchildren stories of traveling through old Tibet on horseback and crossing rivers by ferry.
The most moving scenes in the film show T.C., despite his illness, struggling to tell these stories. He recalls riding on horseback and loading the horses onto ferry boats to cross the rivers. These small, vivid details bring home the vast distances people once traveled across that remote country. Kristi handles these moments with real skill. She lets us see his condition plainly, and then she cuts in brief footage of Tibet, the Dalai Lama and refugee life today. The effect is to suggest what may be racing through T.C.’s mind, even when his thoughts no longer come in order. Just as impressive is her use of rare color footage of old Tibet, which she handles with great sensitivity and subtlety. The film also includes rare reflections from the Dalai Lama himself, now in his later years.
Far From Home weaves together archival images, home movies and the recollections of T.C., Judy and their three children. In doing so it resurrects T.C.’s fading memories and recreates his life, from his childhood in Shigatse to his passing in 2024. It is a love story and a family story, but it is also a story of how a generation of Tibetans worked to keep their nation alive in exile.
Disclosure: Kristi Tethong is my cousin.
FAR FROM HOME · Feature documentary, 75 minutes · Directed, filmed and edited by Kristi Tethong · Produced and written by Losel Tethong and Kristi Tethong · Instagram: @farfromhome_film
Screening: Friday, November 13, 2026, 7 p.m., at the Whitby Hotel, New York, as part of the first New York edition of the Tibet Film Festival. Followed by a Q&A with director Kristi Tethong and producer Losel Tethong. More information: www.tibetfilmfestival.org/newyork
Feature documentary, 75 minutes
Feature documentary, 75 minutes
