Delhi, 15 October 1995, (The Sunday Times) - It is perfect Hollywood material. The two-year-old son of a poor Tibetan farmer becomes god-king of the ancient Himalayan state. When he is only 15 his country is invaded by China and he is forced into exile. He grows up to win the Nobel peace prize, edit a special edition of Vogue magazine and become the spiritual darling of the rich and famous.

Such perfect material, in fact, that some of the film industry's best known names are fighting over the right to turn the extraordinary life story of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled 60-year-old leader, into a Hollywood blockbuster. Martin Scorsese, Harrison Ford and Melissa Mathison, his screenwriter wife, are in one camp. Brad Pitt and lain Smith, a British producer, are in the other.

For five years Mathison,' who also wrote the screenplay for ET, has been writing a film called Kundun about the Dalai Lama's childhood in Tibet. She and Ford have campaigned extensively for the Tibetan cause in the United States and have often met the Tibetan leader. He has promised to help them with their film about his life; they have told friends in the film industry that they have been given exclusive rights and that if others tried they would be wasting their time.

Last week, however, the Dalai Lama also gave his blessing to Smith's film, Seven Years In Tibet, a $50m project based on an autobiographical account of life in the isolated state during the second world war by Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountain climber who taught the Dalai Lama. Pitt has been enlisted to play Harrer.

Mathison and Ford are said to be furious that Seven Years In Tibet could be finished before Kundun. Mathison is travelling to India tomorrow to ask the government for permission to make Kundun before filming starts early next year.

Smith's team, however, is already there. It is also due to start filming in the new year and has been location-hunting in northern India and Tibet. Vijay Shankardass, Smith's lawyer in India, said the government had agreed in principle to allow Seven Years In Tibet to be filmed there. 'The film is already at an advanced stage of production," he said.

Both sides have enlisted some of Hollywood's leading names. Scorsese will direct Kundun while Jean-Jacques Arnaud, the French director of The Name Of The Rose, will direct and co-produce Seven Years in Tibet. Although none of the roles in Kundun has been cast, Pitt has started learning Tibetan and growing a beard to play the Harrer role in Seven Years In Tibet.

Harrer was the first man to climb the north face of the Eiger(?), was an Olympic ski champion, and walked across the Himalayas into Tibet after escaping from an Indian prisoner-of-war camp at the beginning of the second world war. During the seven years he lived in the Himalayan state he became the teenage Dalai Lama's friend and private tutor. He built his pupil a small cinema and arranged private screenings of Shakespeare plays and home movies. When the Chinese invaded in 1950, Harrer travelled to India with the Dalai Lama.

Mathison refused to comment at the weekend on Smith's film. "We are just concentrating on making our own movie," she said. "The Dalai Lama has been a great help, as has his office. I consider that he and his office are joint partners in this film."

Mathison and Ford became involved with the Tibetan issue three years ago after their first visit to the state to research Kundun, the Dalai Lama's childhood nickname. After the visit, their tour guide, Gendun Rinchen, was accused of being a spy by the Chinese and imprisoned for nearly a year. Last month the couple gave evidence to the American Senate about that visit. Mathison is on the board of the International Campaign for Tibet, based in Washington.

The Dalai Lama has diplomatically decided that he likes both scripts. "Harrer is one of the few westerners who [is] fully acquainted with the Tibetan way of life. His book is beautiful and good," he said. "I have read Melissa Mathison's script. It is very good, very moving. Those people have been very supportive and sympathetic."

He believes there is room for two films about his life. "I am a very unfortunate person," he said. "Since I was 15 or 16 there has been a tragic situation in my country and most of my life has been spent under difficult circumstances.

"Buddhist teaching has helped me to retain hope and determination in this time, so perhaps a story about such a person must be a good thing."