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THE DOCUMENTARY

When an international network helmed by young Tibetan activists discovers China’s 2008 Olympic torch route, they hatch an audacious plan. China is planning to run the torch around the world, over Everest, through Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and all the contested territories in a billion-dollar propaganda campaign while the world watches and applauds.

Students for a Free Tibet decides to seize this moment by sending an action team to Everest. The team has a deceptively simple mission: go to Everest, stage a protest and get arrested just as China announces their torch route to the world.

If they pull it off, they’ll hijack China’s big Olympic moment and focus the world’s attention on Tibet. With five Americans in custody, media stories around the world will begin “China unveiled their torch route today as five Pro-Tibet protestors remain in detention…."

They'll “steal” the Olympic torch.

Produced by the team that stunned the world and changed Olympic history, this film takes viewers inside the secretive world of “high profile direct action”.

Five young Americans, each chosen for their particular skills, step out of their everyday lives to attempt a series of nearly impossible tasks to pull off the Everest action. Team members enter Tibet under assumed identities and smuggle satellite equipment through military checkpoints. They then perform the protest inside a militarized zone and send the footage via satellite to a secure server in New York.

A long odds story with a successful payoff, team members who didn’t know each other even a week before, use humor, solidarity, love and an inordinate amount of luck to pull off the seemingly impossible.   This is a classic heist film with a lot of comedy, but one that will take on global resonance as it releases during China’s crackdowns ahead of the 2022 Beijing Games.

The CAST

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Lhadon Tethong

Lhadon is one of the most influential young leaders and recognizable faces in the Tibetan freedom movement and was awarded the first annual James Lawson Award for Nonviolent Achievement by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. A Tibetan born in Canada, she served previously as Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet. A visionary strategist, she led the high-profile global campaign to condemn China’s rule of Tibet in the lead-up to and during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, making international headlines as she posted real-time accounts of her travels through Beijing as it was preparing for the 2008 Olympics on her blog – one of the first in the Tibetan world – BeijingWideOpen.org, eventually drawing the ire of the Chinese authorities and being detained and deported from China. A renowned spokesperson on Tibetan issues in the media, Lhadon has addressed audiences globally about Tibet’s occupation and movement for freedom.

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Tenzin Dorjee (Tendor)

When Tendor snuck into Tibet in 2007, he became the first exile in history to enter Tibet and successfully launch a nonviolent protest. He has worked at the National Endowment for Democracy, Students for a Free Tibet, and Tibet Action Institute and is globally recognized as one of the leaders of the Tibetan Independence Movement. He is the author of 'The Tibetan Nonviolent Struggle: A Strategic and Historical Analysis’ and works as a Senior Researcher and Strategist at the Tibet Action Institute. He is a PhD student in political science at Columbia University and is a political cartoonist for the Tibetan Review.

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Laurel Sutherlin

Laurel is a naturalist and environmental educator with an endless love for birds, forests and wild places. He is also a lifelong environmental and human rights activist with decades of experience using bold and creative tactics to nonviolently stand up to some of the most powerful forces on the planet that are destroying nature or oppressing people. Laurel works on all of Rainforest Action Network’s campaigns in messaging development, communications strategy and content writing. He develops and implements creative tactics to earn high-impact media as well as other public-facing approaches to pressuring campaign targets to achieve Rainforest Action Network’s campaign goals.

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Kiri Westby

Kiri has worked clandestinely in war zones with endangered activists for many years, and had first-hand knowledge of the Tibetan plateau in 2007. She is a human rights activist and author who specializes in the rights of women and girls in war zones. Her work has taken her deep into armed conflicts in Africa, Asia and South America.

Kiri has written for international media for the past decade and her first book, Fortune Favors The Brave: An Extraordinary Memoir (Post Hill Press), releases in March 2020. 

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Jeff Friesen

An activist, physicist, engineer and mountaineer, Jeff has spent most of his life working for a more just and sustainable world. A lot of that work is very geeky.

Jeff built his first neural network in 1993 to analyze plasma fusion measurements and continues to use modern innovations in data science and computing to try to solve hard problems that our world is facing. He co-founded and lead the software development team for Snugg Pro and is a co-founder and CTO of Radiant Labs where he leads the software and data development team. 

He earned his Masters in physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder at the Joint Institute of Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA).

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Shannon Service

Shannon spent her twenties as a direct action coordinator for groups including the Ruckus Society, the Direct Action Network and Students for a Free Tibet.

She later became a journalist and filmmaker whose work has appeared in The New York Times, the BBC, NPR and The Guardian of London. Her documentary GHOST FLEET premiered at Telluride before going on to Toronto and Berlin International Film Festivals. The VR piece she co-directed premiered at Sundance. Shannon was a finalist for DOC NYC’s best new director award and won the Palm Springs Film Festival’s emerging director prize.