Every once in a while, a documentary comes along that makes you pause and reflect on your own life – and how you move through the world. Shown at this year’s Tibet Film Festival in London, MOLA: A Tibetan Tale of Love and Loss is a beautiful portrait of family and faith, and a story about the effort to preserve one’s heritage.

MOLA‘s main protagonist is the titular Mola (also known as Kunsang Wangmo), a hundred-year-old nun who has lived in exile since Tibet’s occupation in 1959. Having fled as a young mother, she rebuilt her life in Switzerland with her daughter, Sonam. Now, as her centenary approaches, Mola wishes to go home, not to visit, but to die on Tibetan soil.

Yangzom and Martin Brauen direct this story with extraordinary sensitivity; those serious conversations, decision-making, Mola’s humorous moments, and the heart-rending wait for a visa make this documentary worth every second of your time.

Loss in this film is not only about death. It’s the ongoing feeling of not fully belonging, yet MOLA isn’t sad all the time. It’s full of humour, warmth, and the little ways love shows up every day. Mola’s lively, playful spirit lights up the screen. Her teasing of Sonam shows that the mother-daughter bond exists and tells us that even in exile, her joy remains.

When Mola finally receives permission to return to Tibet, the family’s joy is tempered by an inevitable truth: love and separation often arrive hand in hand. For Sonam, the decision to let her mother go is bittersweet; she is happy that her mother will finally travel to her homeland, yet it may be the last time they are physically close. Facing the end of life, Mola demonstrates that mortality is not an end, but a passage, one that gains meaning when lived fully, with awareness, faith, and the satisfaction of having loved deeply.

In the end, MOLA is not only about Tibet or exile. It is about all the places we long to return to, the people we must learn to let go of with grace, and the deeper questions of life and death itself.

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Written by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtesy of Tibet Film Festival London 2025

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