After a vision by Reting Rinpoche (the regent of Tibet) several lamas disguised as servants discover a promising candidate: a child born to a farming family in the province of Amdo, near the Chinese border.

After a brief power struggle in which Reting is imprisoned and dies, the Dalai Lama begins taking a more active role in governance and religious leadership.

Upon his return to Tibet, the Dalai Lama learns of more horrors perpetrated against his people, who have by now repudiated their treaty with China and begun guerrilla action against the Chinese.

After the Chinese make clear their intention to kill him, the Dalai Lama is convinced by his family and his Lord Chamberlain to flee to India.

After consulting the Nechung Oracle about the proper escape route, the Dalai Lama and his staff put on disguises and slip out of Lhasa under cover of darkness.

[7] Disney CEO Michael Eisner permitted the shooting of "Kundun" to proceed but, due to Chinese Communist Party pressure, he limited the film's distribution and marketing.

[16] Disney's steadfastness stood in stark contrast to Universal Pictures, which had earlier "turned down the chance to distribute Kundun for fear of upsetting the Chinese.

"[16] Scorsese, Mathison, and several other members of the production were banned by the Chinese government from ever entering China as a result of making the film.

[19] Disney apologized in 1998 for releasing the film and began to "undo the damage", eventually leading to a deal to open Shanghai Disneyland by 2016.

[20] Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner has apologized for offending Chinese sensitivities, calling the film "a stupid mistake."

The website's consensus reads: "Hallucinatory but lacking in characterization, Kundun is a young Dalai Lama portrait presented as a feast of sight and sound.

The film's visuals and music are rich and inspiring, and like a mass by Bach or a Renaissance church painting, it exists as an aid to worship: It wants to enhance, not question.

[27] Stephen Holden of The New York Times called the film "emotionally remote" while praising its look and its score: "The movie is a triumph for the cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has given it the look of an illuminated manuscript.

"[16] David Edelstein called the movie a hagiography whose "music ties together all the pretty pictures, gives the narrative some momentum, and helps to induce a kind of alert detachment, so that you're neither especially interested nor especially bored.

"[29] Michael Wilmington of The Chicago Tribune gave the film four stars out of four, writing: "Hauntingly beautiful, raptly serious and vastly ambitious, Kundun is exactly the sort of movie that critics complain the major Hollywood studios never make -- and then tend to ignore or underrate when it finally appears.

"[30] Barry Norman at the BBC opined that Kundun was "beautifully and intelligently made, far more impressive, for instance, than the recent Seven Years in Tibet".

"[31]In 46 Long, the second episode of The Sopranos, Christopher Moltisanti, Adriana La Cerva, and friend Brendan Filone are waiting outside a nightclub when Scorsese (played by recording artist Tony Caso) is escorted inside by security.

The movie inspired the writing of the 2008 song "Chinese Democracy" off the album of the same name by hard rock band Guns N' Roses.

[32] In 2017, the web series Lasagna Cat featured the film's complete score in the hour-long episode "07/27/1978", in which John Blyth Barrymore delivers a philosophical monologue about a Garfield strip published on the titular date.