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In October 1987, an 18 month old boy from Grenada, Spain, was recognized officially as the reincarnation of a great Buddhist master, Lama Thubten Yeshe. Ordained as a monk, he spent his childhood in a Tibetan monastery in South India, studying 12 hours a day. At the age of 18, he decided to leave the monastery in order to discover the world outside the walls and began a brand new life in Ibiza, Spain. This is the story of Lama Tenzin Ösel Rinpoche, the inspiration behind Bernardo Bertolucci’s « Little Buddha ». Now 32, Ösel is about to start a new journey. He fell deeply in love and he just became a father of a little baby boy last september in Brasil.

And now for the first time, Ösel agreed to tell his story in this documentary.

Osel-1504951007 @Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

The_film-1507152600 This 90 minute documentary Project with Ösel is a very intimate film, the first project he accepted to do in many years. The film is an extraordinary journey between East and West, past and present, freedom and destiny, filmed with Ösel in his current life around the world, written like a confidence passed from a young father to his child.

This film is also an international feature documentary project, because Ösel’s relatives, -from his Spanish family to his westerner friends, his Brasilian partner, his Tibetan brothers and Buddhist masters- are living all around the world, in many different countries and many different cultures. They are all connected to his universal identity and to his unique destiny. In this documentary, everyone will speak in his or her own maternal language from their part of the world, and share memories and confidences mostly for the very first time.

Your participation through this crowdfunding will guarantee the independence of the film.

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Ösel Hita Torres was born to Maria Torres and Paco Hita in Grenada, Spain, February 12th 1985. His name means "clear light" in Tibetan.

Maria and Paco had been part of a generation in the 70’s for whom western life didn’t provide the spiritual answer they needed. In 1977, they met one of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist masters in the West, Lama Thubten Yeshe, in Ibiza. « Lama Yeshe » dedicated his life to teaching Buddhism to westerners, especially hippies, and by the time he died in 1984, he had thousands of students from Europe, Australasia and America.

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Ösel was Maria and Paco’s fifth child and his birth came soon after Lama Thubten Yeshe’s passing. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who was Lama Yeshe’s closest disciple, had seen a western baby in a dream and soon came across baby Ösel. In Buddhism it is believed that great spiritual masters are able to choose into whom they are going to be reborn, and Lama Yeshe had a very close connection with Maria and Paco. A few months later Ösel was taken to Dharamsala, Northern India, and subjected to a series of traditional tests. In 1987, His Holiness the Dalai Lama recognized him officially as a "tulku", a recognised reincarnation, and a very high status in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

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Ösel’s parents accepted that he had to be educated as a monk. At the age of 6, the little Spanish boy entered Sera Je Monastery in Southern India and would spend his entire childhood there, studying buddhism and Tibetan became his maternal langage.

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By his late teens, Ösel started to be attracted to the outside world. He read Herman Hesse’s book «Siddharta », and longed to start exploring the West by himself.

At the age of 18, Ösel decided to leave the monastery, and discover a new life in Ibiza, Spain, and also in Canada, USA and Switzerland.

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Today, Ösel is 32 and at another starting point. Last year he met Indila Dora, a beautiful Brazilian model and fell in love at first sight in Paris, France.

They just became parents of a little baby boy, Tenzin Norbu, born Sept 15th, in Brazil.

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Anouk Burel, 40, is a french award winning documentary film maker. She has made over 40 documentaries for the premier public TV channel in France, France 2. Anouk won the best international documentary award in Ilaria Alpi festival, in Italy for a film about extreme poverty in the slums in Kenya (2010). She was the director of an original series about international photojournalists called « The Dark Room » (France 2). Anouk has known Ösel’s story since her childhood.

" I’ve known Ösel’s story since a very long time but we didn’t meet before last February. We met in a train, in France and it was very special to meet there for the first time, so unconventionally. I told Ösel that I would love to make a documentary about him one day and he agreed, even though he was used to declining such projects before. And here we are, in the beginning of a new journey altogether with Indila and baby Tenzin Norbu, and I hope that we can make it for the cinema, because Ösel is a truly beautiful human being, and I really want to share his inspiring story with you. I deeply thank him for his trust in this project. "

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