Narrated by Goldie Hawn and Peter Coyote, this film is about Nwawang Choephel, a Tibetan-born exile, who, on December 26, 1996, was sentenced to 18 years in prison by the Chinese authorities. Choephel was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study ethnomusicology at Middlebury College, in Vermont. His research took him to Tibet to document and preserve traditional music and dance. In the midst of this research the Chinese authorities arrested him.