"Renowned Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden returns with his profoundly moving new feature [adapted from his own novella] about a Tibetan shepherd named Tharlo. Visiting a Tibetan town in Qinghai province to obtain a proper ID card from the local police station, Tharlo surprises Police Chief Dorje by reciting from memory a lengthy excerpt from one of Chairman Mao’s essays. But things develop in a romantic rather than a political direction. To prepare for his ID photo, Tharlo needs his hair washed, and so meets Yangtso, a beautiful local hairdresser. Their courtship is both exquisitely awkward and enthrallingly suspenseful. Tharlo is smitten, but town-dweller Yangtso’s ideas of fun are not quite Tharlo’s, and he spends an uncomfortable evening with her at a local karaoke joint.

"This is a passionate love story with darker undercurrents, where basic pastoral imperatives such as protecting his sheep from hungry wolves run against Tharlo’s discovery of the contemporary pleasures of smoking, drinking, singing and sex.

Pema Tseden (Old Dog, The Silent Holy Stones, The Search) was born in 1969 in Amdo, in the Tibetan region of Qinghai Province. He is widely recognized as the leading filmmaker of a newly emerging Tibetan cinema and the first director in China to film his movies entirely in the Tibetan language. Tseden has published more than 50 short stories and novels both in Tibetan and Chinese; his work has won numerous awards including the Drang-char (sbrang-char) Tibetan Literature Prize and has been translated into languages English, French, and German. In 2002, Pema Tseden began his film career. His feature films, all of which have received great acclaim, are The Grassland (2004), The Silent Holy Stones (2005), The Search (2009) and Old Dog. Tseden is Chairman of the Directors Association of China; he is also a member of the Filmmakers and Literary Societies of China.