Ritu Sarin was born in New Delhi, and completed her MFA in Film and Video at California College of the Arts. She has directed several films with Tenzing Sonam, including “Dreaming Lhasa,” which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005.

“The Sweet Requiem” will begin screening at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9. The film is co-directed by Sonam.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

RS: “The Sweet Requiem” is a film about a young exiled Tibetan woman in India who unexpectedly sees a man from her past. This sparks long-submerged memories of her traumatic escape from Tibet as a child and propels her on a search for redemption and closure.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

RS: From the early ’90s onwards, a second wave of Tibetan refugees made the hazardous trek across the Himalayas to India to escape Chinese rule in their country. Among them were many schoolchildren brought or sent by their parents in the hope that they would receive a proper Tibetan education in one of the Tibetan schools in India set up by the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile, an opportunity denied to them in Tibet.

We were aware of this story but it was only in 2006 — when video footage emerged of a cold-blooded shooting on a Himalayan pass where Chinese border guards opened fire on a group of escaping Tibetans and killed a young teenage nun — that we were struck by the full horror of what it meant to be fleeing from Tibet across the mountains.

This pushed my partner Tenzing Sonam to write the script which eventually became “The Sweet Requiem.”

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

RS: We want people to think about Tibetans who are sharing similar stories to those of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa currently risking their lives to cross seas and borders to find safe havens in Europe. We also want to remind people to reflect on the fact that children are especially at risk during times of crisis and that their lives can be affected forever.

We want to remind people that the Tibetan tragedy is an ongoing one. Behind the curtain of the media blackout imposed on the country by China, there is real suffering happening.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

RS: The fact that this was a Tibetan-language film set in an exile Tibetan context presented some unique challenges. Because the community is small and scattered and does not have the means to support a feature film of this nature, all of our funding had to be raised from outside sources.

In the best of circumstances, raising finance for a foreign-language film is a difficult task. For us, it was literally a mountain to climb!

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

RS: We raised money from a few private investors who were doing it more because they shared our vision rather than any expectations of making money. Donations from supporters and grants from organizations made up the rest. We are also currently in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to raise the last bits of funding we need for publicity and PR.

We were determined to make the film despite there being no easy sources of funding. We had a great deal of moral support from the exile Tibetan community, and we decided to audition early on to figure out if the actors that we needed really existed within the non-professional pool that we had to choose from. The response was very encouraging and gave us the courage to push ahead with the film.

I also worked for the first time with a producing partner, New York-based Shrihari Sathe, which was also hugely helpful. Somehow after many years of persevering, we cobbled together enough funding to make the film. Now we are premiering at TIFF, which is a huge vindication of the hard work that everyone involved in the film put in. But we still need funds for publicity costs and have a Kickstarter campaign ongoing, so in a sense, it still goes on!

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

RS: In my teenage years I had the opportunity to watch some alternative films like Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers” and was blown away by the power of cinema, even when I didn’t fully understand it. I never dreamed of being a filmmaker, as I had no role models in the industry.

Years later, after my undergraduate studies, I lived and worked in Europe for a number of years and became an arthouse cinema addict. I decided to study filmmaking and went to the California College of the Arts in the Bay Area for my MFA in Film and Video.

Since then, I have never stopped making films or being involved in cinema in some way. I really believe in the power of cinema to create greater understanding and to transform our perceptions of the world we live in.

W&H: What’s the best advice and worst you’ve received?

RS: The best advice I received is to believe in yourself and follow your vision and the rest will take care of itself eventually, and with hard work.

I’ve not followed the worst advice and have forgotten it!

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

RS: It’s about telling the stories that are important to you and doing your best. There is no one way of making films.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

RS: I don’t have favorites as such, but Jane Campion’s “Sweetie” was nothing like I’d seen before. It was a very complex, inventive, sensitive depiction of her troubled teenage protagonist.

Some other films I’ve liked made by women are Mouly Surya’s “Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts,” Agnès Varda’s “Faces Places,” and Laurie Anderson’s “Heart of a Dog.”

W&H: Hollywood and the global film industry are in the midst of undergoing a major transformation. What differences have you noticed since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?

RS: We are very far from the centers of the film industry, living as we do in the Himalayas. However, we have been running a small indie film festival for the past seven years, the Dharamshala International Film Festival, and we’ve definitely noticed a greater openness to women-centric stories and the beginnings of films and discussions about subjects that were previously taboo.

While this not a direct result of the #MeToo movement, it comes from the same global movement. We’ve also seen an increase in the number of Indian women filmmakers and that in itself is encouraging.

Check out an exclusive clip from “The Sweet Requiem” below.