Sexuality to gender identity: This film festival explores issues in South Asia

Updated On: 21 April, 2024 06:21 AM IST | Mumbai | Sucheta Chakraborty

A non-fiction film festival focused on South Asia and organised by the Asia Society India Centre will put the spotlight on gender, sexuality and the rights of the marginalised with the aim to give a platform to stories that get left behind

Parda Faash will showcase films spotlighting themes such as Partition and hockey, the marriage prospects of gay youth in India, and the history and struggles of the displaced people of Palaikuli in northern Sri Lanka’s Musali South after the country’s civil war ended in 2009

It felt true to what we are trying to do with this festival, which is to look into a curtained, unglamorous, still-forming South Asia,” Inakshi Sobti, Chief Executive Officer of the Asia Society India Centre, tells us. She is explaining the thinking that went into the naming of Parda Faash, a two-day film festival focused on issues of gender, sexuality and the rights of marginalised communities in South Asia that the organisation is hosting in collaboration with Film Southasia and the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai. “I think the films being screened at the festival shatter the idea that our struggles are confined only to us and our borders. In many of the films for instance, you see women from India, Nepal and Pakistan facing similar struggles around gendered identity and the freedom to live.”

Inakshi Sobti