They seemed an unlikely pair — the Tibetan Buddhist monk who had spent 33 years in Chinese prisons and labor camps and the aspiring Japanese filmmaker.

Palden Gyatso, 77, was a political prisoner in China for years. He is the subject of the documentary “Fire Under the Snow.”

The filmmaker, Makoto Sasa, said she first heard of the monk, Palden Gyatso, when she was in college in Japan. After she arrived in New York to study film, alone and speaking no English, she read his memoir, “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” (Grove Press, 1997). “His story made me think my problem is nothing,” she said.

Ms. Sasa, 35, decided to make a documentary about him. …

A Tibetan Monk’s Political Passion Inspires a Documentary – NYTimes.com