Tibetan director, writer and producer, Pema Tseden has received numerous prizes and nominations from international film festivals including Berlin, Venice, Hong Kong, Locarno and Busan. He began his career with several short films, before directing his first feature The Silent Holy Stones, the first film in Tibetan shot in Tibet with a Tibetan cast and crew. He won an APSA in 2015 as a producer on River and also worked on other APSA nominated films including Old Dog, The Summer is Gone and Tharlo. In 2018 he wrote and directed Jinpa, produced by Wong Kar-Wai, and won Best Screenplay at the Horizons competitions of the Venice International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director at the 2018 Golden Horse Film Festival, China’s biggest film award ceremony. Balloon is his first APSA nomination for Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay. As an author, Tseden writes both in Tibetan and in Chinese and his books have been translated into English, French, German, Czech, and many other languages.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and emerging. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
