Nepali ‘rock star’ nun’s story told in Ani Choying Drolma: Mission Impossible. Film’s director hopes it focuses minds on risks to girls in poverty everywhere

Hong Kong filmmaker says ‘finding freedom’ is the message of her documentary about Nepali nun Ani Choying Drolma, whose Buddhist chant albums made her a star

The nun opened a school to help girls escape poverty as she did, which inspired Jennifer Lin to make the film. Lin hopes it shows the value of girls’ education

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Ani Choying Drolma, wearing a yellow scarf, and Hong Kong filmmaker Jennifer Lin, standing next to Drolma in a pink top, photographed during the shooting of Lin’s documentary about the Nepali Buddhist nun’s escape from poverty and the school she founded to help other girls do the same. Photo: courtesy of Jennifer Lin

Published: 7:15am, 15 Feb 2024

Much has been written about Ani Choying Drolma, a Nepali Buddhist nun who found fame singing in the late 1990s and went on to found a school for impoverished girls in 2000.

But when Jennifer Lin, a professor in City University of Hong Kong’s department of media and communication, visited the Arya Tara School in early 2010, she was not aware of the story behind the “rock star nun”.

“I hadn’t even heard her music, but all these kids at the school really surprised me,” says Lin. “All the girls were so elegant. I saw one of the [novices] drinking tea and reading newspapers in the playground.

“I thought ‘Wow! What did she do to all these girls that made them so elegant and full of feminine qualities, even though they come right out of poverty’?”

Music was a tool or even a weapon for Ani Choying, which she then used as a tool to free fellow sisters.

Jennifer Lin, Hong Kong filmmaker

Lin listened to Drolma’s songs and knew there was a story to be told.