01
Germany
Bodhicharya Berlin
Ringu Tulku Rinpoche's Buddhist centre in Berlin, and one of the film's central locations. In the middle of the city, the centre becomes a place of practice, conversation, and peace.
A life on the road. A mind at ease.
Ordained as a monk at the age one, forced to flee Tibet as a child, and sent across the Himalayas under threat of death, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche's life began inside events most people only encounter as history. Decades later, he moves through the modern world with disarming lightness: airports, retreat centres, public halls, family homes, cafés, and a yearly schedule that carries him from country to country.
Nomadic Monk follows him across continents, not as a figure sealed inside tradition, but as someone carrying it through ordinary life: a long-haul flight, a meal in McDonald's, a pause before coffee, a room full of people asking how to live with their own minds. The film brings the audience close to a life shaped by Buddhist practice, exile, and continuous movement. What emerges is the portrait of a man who carries ease and kindness wherever he goes.
Nomadic Monk is about meeting a Buddhist master who has spent a lifetime working with the mind — and seeing what becomes possible when life is met with ease, humour, and unwavering kindness.
Filmed across Germany, Portugal, India, and Nepal, Nomadic Monk stays close to the ordinary texture of Rinpoche's life as he moves between countries, rooms, conversations, and the quiet intervals in between. The journey is in the waiting and moving as much as the arrival.
A man with an extraordinary history is seen through daily life rather than distance. What remains is his humour, steadiness, and unceasing kindness—and the question at the heart of the film: how does a person cultivate that way of meeting life?
New footage from 2026, woven with archival material from earlier journeys.
Ringu Tulku Rinpoche's Buddhist centre in Berlin, and one of the film's central locations. In the middle of the city, the centre becomes a place of practice, conversation, and peace.
The Atlantic leg. A week in Braga followed by the coast—an informal café Q&A in Cascais, two days in the Algarve. Light, sea, and conversation without agenda.
Where the journey began. Family, origin, the landscape of his childhood — the Himalayas as both backdrop and context. A return to the source that reframes everything that comes before and after.
Previously shot footage woven into the film's biographical thread — monastery life, early teaching years, the continuity of practice across decades.
A Buddhist retreat centre in the Hérault valley. Previously shot material capturing monastic life, landscape, and the European dimension of his teaching world.
For a few minutes, the familiar changes shape. The sun disappears behind the moon, the Mediterranean falls into shadow, and everyone looking up is reminded of the same thing: everything depends on our perception.
Ringu Tulku Rinpoche is a Tibetan Buddhist master of the Kagyu tradition, trained under many of the great Tibetan teachers of the 20th century, including His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa and His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. He studied at the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Gangtok and Sampurnananda Sanskrit University in Varanasi, and later served as Professor of Tibetology in Sikkim for many years. His doctoral work focused on the Ecumenical Movement in Tibet.
He is known internationally for a rare combination: deep scholarship, fluent English, warmth, humour, and a responsive teaching style that makes complex ideas accessible without flattening them.
Rinpoche carries the title of “His Eminence,” but moves through the world with striking simplicity. He teaches across continents, meets people from many cultures, and brings Buddhist understanding into direct contact with the questions of daily life.
The film follows this range: the extraordinary and the completely ordinary, held in the same person.
Ela Crain is a writer and filmmaker whose work explores how people change, how stories shape perception, and how the mind turns experience into identity. Before writing full-time, she ran a video agency in London, made a documentary in Kenya, co-founded a Webby-nominated non-profit storytelling platform, and advised technology companies on human-centred storytelling.
Her background includes film and digital media, cognitive and perceptual brain sciences, archaeology, and sociobiological anthropology.
In Nomadic Monk, Ela’s role is to bring the questions of a modern audience into contact with Rinpoche’s way of seeing. She is interested in what actually helps people live differently, especially when insight must survive the test of ordinary life.
Tom Zachmeier is a German filmmaker and editor with decades of experience in film, television, camera work, and post-production. He studied Audio-Visual Communication at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, worked in film editing and camera in Los Angeles, and has been active as a film editor in Germany since 2001.
His film and television credits include work listed under Thomas Zachmeier, including Sabine!!, Der Staatsfeind, and 23 Morde.
Tom has also filmed Buddhist teachers through BuddhabyNature, including previous work with Ringu Tulku Rinpoche.
In Nomadic Monk, Tom brings the visual continuity of the road: the travel, the rooms, the pauses, the texture of a life spent moving between people and places.
Receive updates on the film—festival dates, trailer release, and news from the road.
No noise. Only what matters.
You're in. We'll be in touch when there's something worth saying.