Next Life

Multiple films—including Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder and Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void—have drawn inspiration from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a classic text that functions as a guide to the unsettling and turbulent states experienced shortly before and after death, until the consciousness moves toward rebirth in a new form. Whereas those works depict death as a hallucinatory passage, multimedia artist Tenzin Phuntsog’s fiction debut, which was executive produced by Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light), offers a markedly different vision: a calm, serene, and documentary-like voyage captured on 35mm film. A Tibetan American family in Northern California prepares for the impending death of its patriarch, who hopes to be reincarnated as a bird. Their preparations include a frustrating attempt to secure a Chinese visa that would permit him to make one final return to his birthplace in Tibet. Shot in the director’s family home in Fairfield, California, and juxtaposing traditional Buddhist rituals with the American built environment, Next Life achieves a profound emotional clarity in its exploration of grief, longing, and spirituality. A Lunette Films release.