Now in its 15th year, the South Asian Film Festival of Montreal returns as a hybrid festival, bringing audiences an expansive program of more than 75 films from countries like Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the Philippines.
“With what is happening in the world and the kind of polarization we are seeing nowadays, storytelling is something that is an ancient art, and it is something that connects people’s identity, their cultures, their way of life, their ethnicities,” said Dr. Syeda Nayab Bukhari, the festival’s director and head of programming.
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“It’s part of Kabir Centre’s initiative and because Kabir Centre is known for promoting art and culture, and film is something that is storytelling, so along with other art forms, this was also something that Kabir Centre thought would be a great initiative. And 15 years down the road now, we think that yes, it was a good idea.”
“Arts can also be a powerful medium to arouse the consciousness of the people in a world where there are so many issues and we are struggling for the solutions,” said Tirumalai Raghunathan, president of the film festival and general director of the Kabir Centre. “So arts has got twofold objective. One is to emotionally appeal the people and transform them and transport them. The other is to encourage debates around important topics and find some kind of reconciliation.”
Organized by Kabir Cultural Centre, the festival inauguration will be held on April 30 with in-cinema screenings taking place as of May 1 at J.A. DeSève Cinema at Concordia University, followed by online programming from May 4-24.
“With every passing year we are getting a great selection of films from all over the world,” Bukhari said. “The challenge is how to make sure that we have a good balance and balance in terms of not only the big size countries take over all the festivals. So we have to make sure that even the smaller countries have the representation and also linguistic diversity is something that we want to. And then the third challenge is to make sure that themes are also kind of diverse. Right? And now we are becoming more and more sensitive to have films from not only filmmakers in South Asia but in Canada also and elsewhere.”
Eisha Marjara is a Canadian filmmaker and writer. She directed the film “Calorie,” showing in the festival.
“I always thought of making a film about this event, this tragic event, the Air India bombing of Flight 182,” Marjara said. “It is like considered the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history and there’s virtually no films or no feature films actually. There’s documentaries made about it but there’s very little told about this historic event. So I really felt like I wanted to do it as a feature drama that was focused on one family.”
The hybrid festival takes place May 1-3 and then May 8-10 in cinema. The online festival takes place May 4-24.
Head online to register with your name and email and watch the films for free anywhere in the world.
