By Lindsey Hawkins

“Save Tibet.” Bumper stickers, T-shirts and celebrities promote this phrase, but not everyone has taken the time to delve beyond the idiom.

A recent documentary that was screened at Northeastern this week attempted to show what is beneath the rhetoric — a country burdened with hidden atrocities and persecution that is in desperate need of attention.

Victoria Mudd, who won an academy award in 1986 for her documentary “Broken Rainbow,” is the producer and co-writer of a much-anticipated documentary about those atrocities. “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion” was 10 years in the making. Mudd worked alongside Tom and Sue Peosay to create this remarkably poignant film.

Mudd traveled to Tibet in 1993 and now describes the Tibetans with warmth and admiration. Although China has declared it illegal to possess a picture of the Dalai Llama in Tibet, Mudd handed out pictures of the Dalai Llama to a crowd of eager and grateful Tibetans. She narrowly escaped arrest.

“The feeling we’re trying to convey is a quote said by the Dalai Llama: When I see beings oppressed by evil deeds, may I hold them dear as if I have found a rare and precious treasure,” Mudd said.

The final cut of “Cry of the Snow Lion” draws excerpts from 68 interviews, and although obviously partisan, the film manages to find room for Chinese government spokesmen.

Mainly, though, the film pays tribute to the peaceful and compassionate lifestyle of the people in Tibet, which is the Buddhist spiritual capital of the world.

When asked why she chose to make a documentary on a subject which carries such enormity, Mudd said, “Something grabs you. Something hits you so hard that you can’t ignore it. You can’t go on with life as usual.”

Mudd and the Peosays have created a film about Tibet’s struggle for autonomy which touches on almost every aspect of the complex and shocking situation currently occurring in Tibet.

“It’s 10 years in the making, actually 12, but we took two years off because we couldn’t stand each other,” said Mudd.

This documentary, filled with gorgeous Tibetan landscapes and reverence for the customs, rituals and heritage of Tibet, also provides a blatant depiction of the atrocities, such as concentration camps and torture, committed against Tibet by the Chinese government.

Mudd said the documentary is “for people who know nothing about Tibet, until now; to give facts without making it a History Channel piece.”

“Tibet: The Cry of the Snow Lion” will open Oct. 17 at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline.