NEXT LIFE
Feature Narrative Film, 35mm, Color, 5.1 Sound, 73 mins, (US/MEX) 2025
Roles: Director, Writer, Producer, Cinematographer, and Editor
Executive Producers: Carlos Reygadas, Splendor Omnia Studios, Ben Conrad
Lunette Films
Salón De Belleza
A Tibetan family in America confronts the decline of its patriarch, who longs to return to his homeland before he dies. A simple setup gives way to quiet complexity, as his son's struggle to secure a Chinese visa for that final journey becomes a source of frustration. Amid the grief, there's a sliver of solace: the monks reveal that he will be reborn as a bird in Tibet in his next life. Next Life achieves emotional clarity on spiritual longing and exile through poised, serene images of a rare, modest, yet exalted spirituality.
A simple setup gives rise to quiet complexity in the Tibetan American director Tenzin Phuntsog’s first dramatic feature, “Next Life,” set in an unnamed American suburb (filmed largely in his parents’ house, in California). There, an old Tibetan man (Tsewang Migyur Khangsar) requests a Tibetan doctor to tend to his ever more troubling ailments. As the patient weakens, he hopes to visit Tibet once more, prompting his son (Tenzin Phurpatsang) to seek out a visa for him from a Chinese consulate; meanwhile, the family turn toward their religious traditions, which Phuntsog strikingly and movingly embodies in poised and serene images of a rare, modest, yet exalted spirituality.
— Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Between restraint and suspension, NEXT LIFE embraces the calm and silence conducive to soothing the soul, allowing it to pass through the Bardo before rebirth. Capturing the essence of this delicate intermediate state, Tenzin Phuntsog also reminds us that in every photographic image, 'the return of the dead' is present.
— Claire Lasolle - FIDMarseille
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 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.
— MoMA, Lincoln Center New York, New Directors New Films
— Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Between restraint and suspension, NEXT LIFE embraces the calm and silence conducive to soothing the soul, allowing it to pass through the Bardo before rebirth. Capturing the essence of this delicate intermediate state, Tenzin Phuntsog also reminds us that in every photographic image, 'the return of the dead' is present.
— Claire Lasolle - FIDMarseille
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 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.
— MoMA, Lincoln Center New York, New Directors New Films
World Premiere: FID Marseille - Marseille, FR, July 2025
In Competition for Best First Feature, Cine+ Competition
North American Premiere: Black Star Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA, August 2025
Message to Man Film Festival - Moscow, RU, Oct 2025
Twin Cities Film Festival - Minneapolis, MN, Oct 2025
Maryland Film Festival - Baltimore, MD, Nov 2025
Houston Cinema Arts Festival - Houston, TX, Nov 2025
New Directors, New Films, MoMA, Lincoln Center - New York, NY, April 13, 14 2026
EMAF, European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, DE, April 22 2026
LACMA Screening, NuArt Theater - Los Angeles, CA, May 16 2026
Foro Internacional de Cine, Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City, MX, Aug 25—30, 2026
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