Pema as The Great Mother Ama Ashe Dongtse as Tashi Ric Young as General Chang Jing Wu Ven Ngawang Chojor as Lord Chamberlain Duncan Fraser as British Officer Production After the Chinese Communist Party pressured the Indian government to threaten to cut electricity to the set and refuse to allow the film to set up a banking account, production shifted from Ladakh to Argentina. The city of La Plata had the railway station where Heinrich leaves for Unserberg is the main station of La Plata and the Mendoza Province in such places as the Andes mountains. After the film was released, the director confirmed that two crews secretly shot about 20 minutes of footage for the movie in Tibet. Other footage was shot in Nepal, Austria and Canada. Music Comparisons between the film and the book The film has a number of significant differences from the book. At the beginning of the film, Harrer, who notably climbed the north face of the Eiger in 1938, is hailed as a "German hero", and replies: "Thank you, but I'm Austrian." To have said that in 1939 would have been extremely bold, since Austria had been part of Greater Germany since the Anschluss of April 1938. In the book, Harrer says nothing about any such remark. Additionally, during the scene at the train station, Harrer appears hostile to the Nazi Party, taking the Nazi flag with reluctance. The real-life Heinrich Harrer was in fact a Nazi Schutzstaffel NCO, and stated in his 1938 book that as a member of the German Alpine Association: "We climbed up the North Face of Eiger over the summit and up to our führer." The film makes Harrer's son a key theme, but in the book, Harrer does not mention his wife or son. He had in fact been married and divorced, as the film shows, but his ex-wife's new husband was killed during the war and Harrer's son was raised by his ex-wife's mother. In his autobiography, Harrer gives details of his contact with his son, but nothing to support what the film shows. In the book, Harrer says there was little to tie him to his home as one of the reasons for staying in Tibet and not returning to Europe. The pre-invasion visit of Chinese Communist negotiators to Lhasa, arriving at an airfield constructed by Tibetans, and their departure for China after a brief conference