Festival Media (FM) was the home video distribution service of Buddhist Film Foundation (BFF). With the rapid decline of the DVD market in the U.S. over the past few years, FM is being phased out. A few titles (below) remain available until inventory is depleted; proceeds benefit BFF, the filmmakers, and often, through them, the subjects of their films or other designated beneficiaries.
BFF is launching a video streaming platform, Buddhist Film Channel in 2024; for updates, please sign up for email alerts. more>
Festival Media
Compassion in Exile
Compassion In Exile is an intimate portrait of Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Inherent in the life story of this Nobel Peace Prize laureate is the saga of the suffering of the Tibetan people under Chinese occupation. more>
Destroyer of Illusion
Unprecedented access and intimate knowledge inform this richly detailed and beautifully filmed portrait of a secret Tibetan Buddhist ritual, the Mani Rimdu festival, and the remarkable spiritual teacher, Trulshik Rinpoche, who leads and preserves this centuries-old tradition. more>
The Devotion of Matthieu Ricard
Nearly forty years ago Matthieu Ricard left his native France and a promising career in cellular genetics to become a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition in Nepal. He is now a translator, photographer and bestselling author (The Monk and the Philosopher, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill) and an active participant in scientific research on the effects of meditation on the brain. more>
KanZeOn
KanZeOn is a mysterious and engaging journey through sound, song, story, ritual, performance, nature, tradition and Japanese Buddhism...a fearless merging of medieval and modern, beautifully filmed with a variety of cinematic techniques on location in Japan. more>
The Lion’s Roar
This is the masterful portrait of the late 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, the great Tibetan Buddhist master known as the Black Hat Lama. The Karmapa is the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage, one of the four great lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. His line of successive reincarnations has its origins in the 13th century when it was the first to identify tulkus, reincarnations of Buddhist teachers. more>
Peace Is Every Step
Author of many books (including the bestsellers Being Peace, Living Buddha/Living Christ, The Miracle of Mindfulness and Peace Is Every Step), Thich Nhat Hanh has had a profound impact on contemporary thinking and, importantly, social action. His efforts to achieve an early peaceful end to the American war in Vietnam earned him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a forty year exile from his homeland. more>
Shugendo Now
There is a unique school of Japanese asceticism called Shugendo, the Way of Acquiring Power, a blend of Shinto, Daoism and Buddhism. Followers practice arduous rituals in mountain wildernesses and are deeply committed to protecting the natural environment. more>
The Silent Holy Stones
Pema Tseden (The Search, Old Dog) is the first Tibetan graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, and this is his dramatic feature debut. Made on location in a village in the Amdo region, the film follows a young lama assigned for Tibetan New Year to attend to the seven-year-old Living Buddha (tulku) of a mountain monastery. more>
Tulku
At age three, Gesar Tsewang Arthur Mukpo, son of renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his British wife Diana, was identified as the reincarnation of the late Jamgon Kongtrul of Sechen, one of his father’s own teachers in Tibet. more>
Un Buda
Un Buda is the brilliant feature film debut of director Diego Rafecas, a Zen teacher in Argentina. The film follows two brothers orphaned as children when their parents were taken by the military during the “Dirty Wars” of the 1970s in Argentina. Tomas (Agustin Markert) is now a drifting and withdrawn young man who experiments with ascetic practices and has an instinctive compassion for others. more>
Words of My Perfect Teacher
From the World Cup in Germany to the remote Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, three students are on a quest they hope will lead to wisdom. The catch is…the teacher. Soccer obsessed, charismatic filmmaker, and citizen of the world, Khyentse Norbu may be one of the most eminent Tibetan Buddhist teachers, but it’s a job description he slyly seems to reject at every turn. more>
