A tibetan monk's search for the reincarnation of his beloved teacher
Unmistaken Child documents the four-year search of Tenzin Zopa, a gentle, baby-faced 28-year-old Nepalese monk, for the reincarnation of his Tibetan master, Geshe Lama Konchog, who died in 2001. The young monk’s journey, on foot, by mule and by helicopter, begun at the request of the Dalai Lama, takes him through some of the world’s most spectacular high country, as he travels from village to village, seeking a very young child who shows signs of being his reincarnated teacher. The film is a real-life examination of the same rituals and traditions observed in Martin Scorsese’s Kundun. Like Mr. Scorsese’s movie, it stands in awe of its subject. The beauty of the landscape and the monk’s sweetness, humility and good humor evoke a plane of existence, at once elevated and austere, that is humbling to contemplate. Child inevitably leads you to consider the material world and to contemplate the balance in your own life between physical gratification and spirituality. The rugged landscape, in which mist filters through craggy cliffs and wild flowers seem to dance in the mountain meadows, suggests that religion and geography are profoundly intertwined. How we perceive the universe, time, death and rebirth has everything to do with altitude and latitude. --The New York Times
