South asian
film festival
Film southasia 2024
sUBMISSIONS OPEN JANUARY 2024
Kathmandu | 4 days
Film Southasia 2022 was held in from April 21 to April 24 in Kathmandu, Nepal. The 13th iteration of the biennial festival of Southasian documentaries also marked the 25th year of the festival’s existence. The festival took place at Yala Maya Kendra and Patan Higher Secondary School Auditorium in Patan Dhoka, Lalitpur. Film Southasia ‘22 featured 71 films from eight countries, six engaging and topical panel discussions, and an exhibition – Create, Collaborate, Catalyze: Reflections on Sexual Violence in South Asia.
Selections
65 spectacular films were selected for screening Film Southasia 2022, the Festival’s Silver Jubilee Year! The 13th edition of the biennial festival of Southasian documentaries started on 21 April and closed late on 24 April, with the award ceremony.
Of the more than 3000 films submitted our selection committee had a tough task trying to determine what to pick. Valuing the craft and significance of the story alike, they also kept an eye on including all areas of this vast region.
FSA’22 screened 55 films in the Main Selection category and another 9 films will be screened in the Student Films category to showcase the work of the next generation of filmmakers.
The complete list of selected films and their details can be found below.
Main Selection - FSA'22
#unfair
The interconnectedness of stories of skin colour, race, caste
Year: 2019
Length: 52 min
Country: India
Language: English
Director: Wenceslaus Mendes, Anoushka Mathews, Mohit Bhalla, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
A Bid for bengal
The trajectory of Hindu nationalism in West Bengal
Year: 2021
Length: 70 min
Country: India
Language: Bengali, English, Hindi
Director: Dwaipyan Banerjee, Kasturi Basu
a.k.a
Doppelgängers on stardom, cinema, mimicry and acting
Year: 2021
Length: 93 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Geetika Narang Abbasi
Understanding place as history, memory, joy, adversity and struggle
Year: 2021
Length: 46 min
Country: Sri Lanka
Language: Tamil
Director: Sumathy Sivamohan
Bangla Surf Girl
Never have the waves or the stakes been so high!
Year: 2019
Length: 86 min
Country: Bangladesh/Canada
Language: Bengali
Director: Elizabeth D. Costs
Bela
A close look at art and labour, feminine and masculine and the ambiguity in between
Year: 2021
Length: 59 min
Country: India
Language: Bengali
Director: Prantik Basu
beyond Blast
Portrait of a battle-scarred artist’s quest for peace
Year: 2021
Length: 52 min
Country: India
Language: Manipuri
Director: Ratan Saikhom
A window into transgender culture and practices in Nepal’s Terai
Year: 2020
Length: 30 min
Country: Nepal
Language: Nepali
Director: Grishma Giri
BorderLands
An intimate exploration of how everyday lives intertwine with borders in the Indian subcontinent.
Year: 2021
Length: 67 min
Country: India
Language: Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, Punjabi
Director: Samarth Mahajan
City GirlS
A close look at art and labour, feminine and masculine and the ambiguity in between
Year: 2021
Length: 28 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Priya Thusvaserry
Co-husband
Portrait of a battle-scarred artist’s quest for peace
Year: 2020
Length: 34 min
Country: Nepal
Language: Nepali
Director: Ganesh Pandey
A window into transgender culture and practices in Nepal’s Terai
Year: 2020
Length: 26 min
Country: Nepal
Language: Nepali
Director: Sikuma Rai
Critical Juncture
Could COVID impact gender norms in India?
Year: 2021
Length: 57 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, English
Director: Alessia Barbiero
Emergence: Out of the Shadows
Coming Out – A journey from denial and despair to compassion and healing
Year: 2021
Length: 80 min
Country: Canada
Language: English
Director: Vinay Giridhar
Fire and Flowers
A glimpse into the life of the sole priestess who offers fire crackers to a temple deity in Kerala, India
Year: 2021
Length: 9 min
Country: India
Language: Malayalam
Director: Benny Aynick, Abhijith Suresh
A window into transgender culture and practices in Nepal’s Terai
Year: 2020
Length: 26 min
Country: Nepal
Language: Nepali
Director: Sikuma Rai
Of longing, transience, and memory – the story of a young Kashmiri Pandit woman finding her way home…
Year: 2020
Length: 67 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, Kashmiri, English
Director: Madhulika Jalali
God's Buffalo
The story of Homan Singh Shivabhakti and his dearly beloved buffalo
Year: 2021
Length: 15 min
Country: Nepal
Language: Nepali
Director: Bishnu Kalpit
A young woman’s quest for recruitment in the British Gurkha regiment
Year: 2021
Length: 35 min
Country: Nepal
Language: Nepali
Director: Bishal Roka Magar
Tracking the high octane lives of Manipur’s highway truckers
Year: 2020
Length: 52 min
Country: India
Language: Manipuri
Director: Amar Maibam
His experiments with Science
Exploring Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of science
Year: 2021
Length: 27 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, English
Director: Aditya Seth
Human costs of the Baglihar dam
Baglihar dam displaced descend spiral into a life of poverty and debt
Year: 2020
Length: 11 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, Kashmiri
Director: Raqib Hameed Naik
INTO THE SEA
A glimpse into the precarious lives of fishermen on the Odisha coast
Year: 2022
Length: 60 min
Country: India
Language: Odia
Director: Ashish Kumar Nayak
A story of love and loss – an archive of “Home” in a partitioned subcontinent
Year: 2022
Length: 54 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu
Director: Priyanka Chhabra
Quest for a lost homeland
Year: 2021
Length: 90 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, English, Punjabi, Urdu
Director: Bani Singh
Mahalle's School - Family Going Live
The Mahalle family’s tryst with e-learning
Year: 2021
Length: 10 min
Country: India
Language: Marathi
Director: Akshay Pradi Ingle
An observational and exploratory foray into reality, perception, and choices
Year: 2021
Length: 75 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Prince Shah
A real-life epic of boyhood and manhood filmed across 20 years in Afghanistan
Year: 2021
Length: 90 min
Country: Afghanistan/United Kingdom
Language: English
Director: Phil Grabsky, Shaoib Sharifi
Natari
Climate migration and its impact on the Indus Delta region
Year: 2021
Length: 45 min
Country: Pakistan
Language: Urdu
Director: Jawad Sharif, Haroon Riaz
Nokkuvidya- The life of a lone string puppeteer
Lone woman puppeteer bears last secrets of ancient highly skilled art
Year: 2020
Length: 37 min
Country: India
Language: Malayalam
Director: Reshmi Radhakrishnan
Portrait of a Willow Woman
Intimate portrait of an indigenous woman in Meghalaya, India
Year: 2021
Length: 30 min
Country: India
Language: Assamese, Bengali
Director: Supriya Prasad
A real-life epic of boyhood and manhood filmed across 20 years in Afghanistan
Year: 2021
Length: 45 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, English, Portuguese
Director: Mrinalini Tewari
Sab Rab De Bande (We're all God's Creation)
Climate migration and its impact on the Indus Delta region
Year: 2020
Length: 28 min
Country: India
Language: English, Hindi
Director: Sukhdeep Singh
Seasons of Life
Foraging and fermenting bamboo-shoot, cherished across Himalayan households
Year: 2020
Length: 12 min
Country: India
Language: Lotha
Director: Dolly Kikon
Shut Up Sona
A feisty female artiste’s fight for equal space in modern India
Year: 2019
Length: 85 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, English
Director: Deepti Gupta
Can the fight against environmental degradation in the high Himalayas work globally?
Year: 2020
Length: 100 min
Country: India/Italy
Language: English, Tibetan
Director: Nicolò Bongiorno
Sri Lanka's Rebel Wife
Ananthy’s crusade to trace her disappeared husband
Year: 2021
Length: 20 min
Country: Sri Lanka
Language: English, Tamil
Director: Kannan Arunasalam
Stories from the Second Floor
Locked in during the pandemic, the filmmaker ruminates on his surroundings
Year: 2021
Length: 33 min
Country: India
Language: Malayalam
Director:
Street protests as they happened during the February 1 Myanmar coup
Year: 2021
Length: 25 min
Country: Myanmar
Language: Burmese
Director: Sai Kyaw Khaing
A film crew’s search for the perfect protagonist
Year: 2020
Length: 38 min
Country: Nepal
Language: Nepali, English
Director: Bibhusan Basnet
Pooja Gurung
The Bishwa Ijtema
Five million Muslims from 150 countries gather annually to pray for peace
Year: 2021
Length: 48 min
Country: Bangladesh
Language: Bengali, Malay
Director: Nuray Kayacan
The Brokpa Trail
Life of a reclusive semi-nomadic pastoral community in the high Himalayas
Year: 2020
Length: 31 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Shyamal Nath
Music breaks barriers of caste and class in performances by a revolutionary band
Year: 2021
Length: 90 min
Country: India
Language: English, Tamil
Director: Monesh
Two little Rohingya siblings sell ice-cream in a Bangladesh refugee camp to bribe officials to release their father from a Myanmar prison.
Year: 2021
Length: 75 min
Country: Bangladesh
Language: Bangla
Director: Sohel Rahman
The Iron Digger
Closing of iron mines upends lives in Rolpa village
Year: 2021
Length: 48 min
Country: Bangladesh
Language: Bengali, Malay
Director: Nuray Kayacan
The Riyalists
Triumphs and tragedies of Nepal’s migrant labour to the Gulf
Year: 2020
Length: 31 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Shyamal Nath
A glimpse into the lives of indigenous people in the Hunza valley of Pakistan
Year: 2021
Length: 90 min
Country: India
Language: English, Tamil
Director: Monesh
One final curtain for Parsi Theatre
Year: 2021
Length: 75 min
Country: Bangladesh
Language: Bangla
Director: Sohel Rahman
The Social Distance
Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on Indian Society
Year: 2021
Length: 48 min
Country: Bangladesh
Language: Bengali, Malay
Director: Nuray Kayacan
Karachi’s young feminists organize a woman’s march, coming up against Pakistan’s radical religious right.
Year: 2020
Length: 31 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Shyamal Nath
Those Days
Life of an ordinary man living through extraordinary times
Year: 2021
Length: 90 min
Country: India
Language: English, Tamil
Director: Monesh
Two little Rohingya siblings sell ice-cream in a Bangladesh refugee camp to bribe officials to release their father from a Myanmar prison.
Year: 2021
Length: 75 min
Country: Bangladesh
Language: Bangla
Director: Sohel Rahman
Urmi
An old Gurkha soldier’s coming to terms with his son’s death
Year: 2021
Length: 48 min
Country: Bangladesh
Language: Bengali, Malay
Director: Nuray Kayacan
Windows of Time
Life of a reclusive semi-nomadic pastoral community in the high Himalayas
Year: 2020
Length: 31 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Shyamal Nath
Ye Lo Bayan Humaare (And We Were There)
The idealism, passion and tribulations of 15 women coming of age in late sixties India
Year: 2021
Length: 57 min
Country: India
Language: English, Hindi
Director: Uma Chakravarti
Student Selection - FSA'22
Behind the Book
Dhaka University Students organize a theatrical protest against communal violence
Year: 2020
Length: 11 min
Country: Bangladesh
Language: Bengali
Director: Ram Krishna Shaha
Jo ho, so ho (Come what may)
Unfolding the idea of vulnerability through poetry
Year: 2019
Length: 18 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Neelansh Mittra
Gau Premi (For the Love of Cow)
Vigil on Cow vigilantism
Year: 2020
Length: 13 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, Gujrati
Director: Maitreya Sanghvi
The life of a Gaine – a musical journalist of old in Nepal
Year: 2019
Length: 23 min
Country: Nepal
Language: Nepali
Director: Pradeep Dhakal
Rabari: The People of the Leopard
A close look at the life of the Rabari shepherd community in Rajasthan
Year: 2020
Length: 20 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Ashwin Gokhale
Rijak Roti
Traditional folk musician’s bid to survive in the new world
Year: 2021
Length: 19 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Krishna Raj Soni
Ruuposh
Family ties fluctuate with political winds defining the relationship between India and Pakistan
Year: 2021
Length: 33 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi, Urdu
Director: Mohd Fehmeed, Zeeshan Amir Khan
Tea and sympathy for heartbroken lovers at the innovative neighbourhood chaiwallah
Year: 2021
Length: 10 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Ridhima Sharma
Jab Hum Chhote The (When I Was Small)
Little children’s responses to the Epic Mahabharata
Year: 2019
Length: 27 min
Country: India
Language: Hindi
Director: Shuchi Prasad