The Tasveer South Asian Film Festival (TSAFF) will hold its 18th edition from October 12 to 22 across multiple venues in Seattle along with online screenings. This year, TSAFF makes history by becoming the first and only Southasian* film festival whose winning films are eligible for submission to the prestigious Oscars.
The festival is being held in partnership with Southasia Peace Action Network and Sapan News.
With the theme of ‘Breaking Cinematic Barriers’, this year’s line-up unveils an impressive collection of 83 selected films spanning diverse genres and captivating themes. The carefully curated selection includes 23 features, 60 shorts, 20 documentaries, and 63 narratives among others.
“We are committed to presenting a program of unparalleled depth and significance. Our festival winners can directly compete in the Academy Awards run, allowing authentic Southasian narratives to shine on the grandest stage, unfiltered and unmediated,” said Tasveer co-founder Rita Meher.
Since 2004, Tasveer Film Festival has been a platform to amplify under-represented Southasian voices through cinema and storytelling. The festival places a spotlight on Southasian filmmakers and strives to inspire social change through films, Q&As, panels, and workshops, which in turn empower, transform, heal, and entertain viewers.
Tasveer has the credit of exhibiting films from trailblazing filmmakers like Shaunak Sen, Mariam Ghani, Roya Sadat, and others long before their global recognition. It has also been a platform for niche storytellers like Tibetan directors Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam or Anand Patwardhan, whose unique perspectives are not always welcome in theatres due to geopolitical pressures.
The Oscar-qualifying status signifies a monumental shift in the landscape of Southasian cinema, streamlining the path for deserving films. Winning at Tasveer now opens a direct gateway for these films to enter the esteemed Oscar race, eliminating the need for intermediaries and allowing authentic Southasian narratives to shine unfiltered and unmediated.
A few of the festival’s most anticipated films this year include Blue Sunshine, a biopic on transgender woman Samyuktha Vijayan, and the Sri Lankan drama Munnel (Sand in Tamil), which will have its world premiere on the festival’s opening night.
Films like Alien, which sheds light on the plight of Indian immigrants in the United States on H1B visas, and Between Earth and Sky, a climate action film based on the life of renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni are also part of the line-up.
The festival kicks off with in-person screenings from October 12 to 15 at premier venues. It will continue in a virtual format on TasveerTV from October 16 to 22.
Click here to buy tickets.
View the schedule here.
*Southasia: Borrowing from Himal Southasian, Sapan uses ‘Southasia’ as one word, “seeking to restore some of the historical unity of our common living space, without wishing any violence on the existing nation-states.”
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