Samdrup Dorje Lama Plays Young Tenzing in Tenzing (2026)

By Mishek Limbu 2026-09-29 22:39:50 Filming

Samdrup Dorje Lama Opens Tenzing (2026) as a Boy

Tenzing tells its story across three actors playing Tenzing Norgay at three different stages of his life. The film opens with the youngest of them, and reviews from both Telluride and TIFF have already flagged his performance as one of the strongest parts of the entire opening stretch.

Samdrup Dorje Lama plays Tenzing as a boy, the son of a yak herder growing up on the Tibetan Plateau. Almost nothing has been published yet about Lama himself, a common situation for a young actor making a first major screen appearance, but the role he plays has already drawn real attention.

This piece covers what critics have said about his performance and the part of Tenzing's story his section of the film actually tells.

The Boy Who Falls in Love With a Mountain

Lama's Tenzing grows up herding his family's yaks, watching Chomolungma, the name his people give Everest, dominate the horizon of daily life. Multiple reviews describe him spending part of his early years at a monastery, a detail tied to hardship in his family circumstances that the film does not shy away from depicting.

Also Read: Johnny Flynn Plays George Mallory in Tenzing (2026)

According to several reviews from the film's festival premieres, young Tenzing encounters the arrival of a foreign expedition led by George Mallory, played by Johnny Flynn, sometime in the 1920s. Critics have been clear that this meeting is speculative rather than a documented historical event, but multiple outlets have singled it out as an effective way to establish why Tenzing fixates on the mountain for the rest of his life.

A Structure Built on Three Actors, One Man

Lama's section hands off to actor Tenzin Dalha, who plays Tenzing as a young man working the land for Sherpa families before finessing his way onto an early expedition. Genden Phuntsok then carries the story from young adulthood through the 1953 summit itself.

Reviewers have generally credited this structure with reinforcing the film's larger theme, a lifetime of persistence rather than a single, isolated triumph. Roger Ebert's site described the approach as reinforcing Tenzing's earnest, dedicated nature by tracing it all the way back to childhood rather than introducing him only as an adult already fixed on his goal.

What Critics Have Said About the Performance

Coverage out of both Telluride and TIFF has repeatedly returned to the film's opening stretch as a genuine strength, even in reviews that were more mixed about the film as a whole. Several critics specifically credited the choice to open with Tenzing's childhood, rather than skipping to the more famous 1953 expedition, with giving the film emotional weight it would otherwise have had to work harder to earn later.

For a young actor with little public track record before this role, that kind of critical attention at a film's world premiere is a rare and specific marker of a strong debut.

A Story That Starts Small and Ends at the Top of the World

Tenzing Norgay's own life took decades to reach the moment most people associate with his name. Casting his childhood with an actor almost nobody outside this production had heard of before, Telluride mirrors that same idea, a story that starts in near-total obscurity before growing into something the world eventually could not ignore.

Lama's section of the film may run only a fraction of its total length, but critics agree it does exactly what an opening needs to do, it makes everything that follows feel earned.