A majority of the film was shot around Morocco.

Plot
Except for brief sequences around China and India, the film is placed completely around Tibet. It begins sustaining a lookup by Reting Rimpoche (a regent of Tibet) for the 14th Reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Reting, ensuing the vision he has had, discovers the location of the promising candidate: a child born to a unfortunate herding family near a Chinese border.

Reting & more lamas administer a line 1 text to a baby where he must choose from either various objects the ones that belonged to the last Dalai Lama. A baby lives a trial; he & his personal come bring around Lhasa, where he is installed whenever Dalai Lama when he comes of age.

When you took a journeying, a tike becomes homesick and frightened, but he is comforted by Reting, world health organization tells him a story of a first Dalai Lama -- whom the lamas known as "Kundun". A story is rebounding from, however these are too meant to show a interconnectedness of all incarnations of a Dalai Lama up to & including the little one himself.

When a film progresses, Kundun matures each within age & learning. Below the brief power struggle where Reting is imprisoned & dies, Kundun begins ingesting the further active role inside governance and religious leadership.

Meanwhile, a Chinese Communists are making noises just about Tibet existence the "traditional" a share of China & their want to "unify" it by owning a motherland. One of these days, despite Tibet's pleas to the United Nations and the United States for intervention, China invades Tibet.

A Chinese come at a start helpful, however once the Tibetans resist communist reorganization and re-education of their society (the Tibetans come particularly repulsed per Communists' ban on religion), the Chinese be oppressive.

As the result a series of progressively horrific atrocities suffered by his people (& many tries in his life) a Dalai Lama resolves to meet sustaining Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing, feeling sure that Mao will make items best. Notwithstanding, in the period of their face-to-face meeting on the final day of the Dalai Lama's visit, Mao makes clear his look at that "religion is poison" & that a Tibetans come "poisoned and inferior."

Upon his go to to Tibet, a Dalai Lama learns of possibly extra nasty horrors perpetrated against his population, world health organization stand by at present repudiated their treaty with China and begun guerrilla action against the Chinese. Eventually, fallowing a Chinese produce clear their intention to stamp out him, a Dalai Lama is convinced by his personal & his Lord Chamberlain to flee to India.

Fallowing consulting a oracle about a proper escape route, the Dalai Lama & his staff wear disguises & slip away from Lhasa under handle of darkness. When you took an hard journeying, throughout which it is pursued per Chinese, a Dalai Lama becomes super sick & lives many visions of the past & first. Eventually, the person makes it to a little mountain pass on the border using India. When a Dalai Lama walks to the guard post, an Indian guard approaches him, salutes, and inquires: "May I ask, are you the Lord Buddha?" A Dalai Lama replies by having a film's final line: "I think that I am a reflection, like the moon on water. When you see me, and I am trying to be a good man, you see yourself."

Awards
Kundun was nominated for quaternity Academy Awards: for Art Direction, Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Costume Design & Original Score (Philip Glass)