Broken Vows

It’s an intimate story about ex- Tibetan Buddhist monks who have broken their vows. In the traditional Tibetan community boys are very often sent to a monastery to learn Buddhist philosophy. For them it is a chance to gain education, for their families to secure their future and sometimes to spare the family modest means of subsistence. Achieving the status of a monk related to a great respect in the community. Most of novices keep monastic vows lifelong. Very few resign from monkhood, venturing into the outside world they hardly know. The film is an interview with three ex-monks, who share their personal experience about the monastic life, their transition into secularity and their dilemmas related to that change. A change which even now costs them emotional turmoil.

Kaska Butkiewicz-Phuntsok

Kaska Butkiewicz-Phuntsok is an anthropologist holding a master degree in Cultural Anthropology from UAM in Poznan/Poland and a second in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also filmmaker and photographer and her interest focuses on the Himalaya region. For the last 10 years, she has been actively involved with the Tibetan community, documenting its life in Asia and also on exile in Europe.