Explorer | Author | Director | Producer
Founder of Shambhala Studio Films.
Laurence
Brahm
Laurence Brahm is an explorer, author, and international award-winning film director and producer.
He is the founder of Shambhala Studio, specializing in films related to Himalayan culture and Asian martial arts.
Between 2017-2024, he has produced and directed three documentaries on the life of the Lotus Born Master, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism, together with three science fiction films on the Shambhala prophecies. Together this film series has won over forty international film festival awards.
He has also directed and produced films on Asian martial arts, including the award winning “Searching for Kung Fu” documentary. On special request from the Karate Association of China, he directed a documentary tracing the origins of Karate to Shaolin Kung Fu, winning at the official Olympics official film festival in Milan in 2024.
A lifetime martial arts enthusiast, he is a Fifth Degree Black Belt in Shotokan Karate, a fourth generation lineage holder in Zhangjia Kungfu, and has extensive training experience in Wing Chun, Qigong and Shaolin Five Animal Neigong.In 2025 the Karate Association of China ranked him as a Sixth Degree Black Belt. He is also a deep practioner of Tibetan Secret Yoga. He currently teaches workshops and courses in both martial arts and tantric Buddhism.
In 2015, he was elected as International Fellow of the Explorer Club in New York.
In 2015, Icelandic President Olavr Ragnar Grimsson invited him to join the Himalayan Third Pole Circle, a group formulating policies to address glacier melting caused by climate change.
In 2016, he received the National Geographic Air and Water Conservation Awared for raising environmental awarness through his Himalayan documentary films.
From 2014 to 2019, he served as the spokesperson and chairman of the Himalayan Consensus Summit.
From 2013 to 2015, he served as a senior advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection and was a lead drafter of Ecological Civilization, China's national environmental protection policy.
In 2012, as the spokesperson for the non-governmental organizations at the 2012 United Nations Earth Summit (Rio+20), he was selected by ScenaRio as one of the 100 opinion leaders advising Rio+20. In 2010, he was awarded the United Nations Development Programme China Biodiversity and Cultural Conservation Award by Jane Goodall.
He is author of over thirty books covering a wide spectrum of subjects connected to his past careers as lawyer, economist, explorer and film director.
These books include:
“Searching for the Lotus Born Master” (2023),
“Gate of Nine Dragons: Searching for Kung Fu” (2024),
and the Himalayan travelogue trilogy: “Searching for Shangri-la” (2003), “Conversations with Sacred Mountains” (2004),” and “Shambhala Sutra” (2005).
Books exploring alternative economic and social models include:
“Fusion Economics” (2015),
“The Anti-Globalization Breakfast Club” (2009), and
“Zhu Rongji: The Transformation of Modern China” (2002).
