The South China Morning Post’s Jeremy Blum tells the back story behind Nowhere to Call Home, a new documentary by Jocelyn Ford, which follows a Tibetan migrant and her young son whom Ford befriended in Beijing:
After that initial conversation between the women, there was no communication for two years. Then, one day Zanta suddenly contacted Ford, begging her to take Yang Qing as her own child. Zanta was low on money, unable to find a new school for her son and without options.
Ford didn’t take Yang Qing, but she did agree to help pay for his schooling.
What blossomed next was a friendship where Ford became a constant companion and confidant for Zanta and her son. Yang Qing even began calling the American woman “Mama Joce”.
[…] “It’s important to remember that a large percentage of the Tibetan views that make it into the mainstream are representative of literate people, who represent only about half of the population,” Ford says. “A senior editor at a state media company joined a screening, and then asked me to screen for about 40 editors. He said Chinese don’t know what’s happening under their noses, and the film could go a long way toward improving understanding between Han Chinese and Tibetans.
“[Meanwhile], international audiences have been shocked to see that Tibet is not the fabled Shangri-la, but a society with…issues like any other society.” [Source]
A trailer for the film is available via the film’s website:
