The Launch of the London Edition of The Divvy Film Festival: Celebrating South Asian Cinema
Breakthrough films from South Asia to be screened at London’s ICA include Cannes Film Festival winner Payal Kapadia’s debut feature film A Night of Knowing Nothing, Iram Parveen Bilal’s Wakhri and Kannan Arunasalam’s Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) partners with Project Art Divvy to present Divvy Film Festival - a showcase of independent films from across South Asia and the diaspora, with filmmakers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, at the ICA, Friday 5 - Sunday 7 July 2024.
Divvy Film Festival screens extraordinary South Asian films from a variety of genres. After running successfully in Pakistan for five years, the festival is proud to bring finely crafted films from South Asia to London. The 3-day program includes 41 films in a celebration of local and regional stories, carefully curated to create a thoughtful and immersive experience spanning films. Divvy Film Festival brings a range of cinema - by acclaimed directors as well as exciting new filmmakers, providing a platform to films not always accessible to international audiences outside of their home countries.
This festival includes full length feature films and short films, documentaries and fiction, on a multitude of themes delving into cultural traditions, friendships, loss, identity, myths, legends, environmental issues, romance, futuristic worlds. These stories capture the joy of ordinary and unexpected moments. They tap into experiences and memories within us and highlight the hero within us all.
This year our program includes stories about extraordinary women in the face of resistance like Iram Parveen Bilal’s Wakhri and Kannan Arunasalam’s Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife. It includes insightful social commentaries like Payal Kapadia’s debut feature film A Night of Knowing Nothing, Ruvin de Silva’s A State in Silence, Seemab Gul’s award winning Sandstorm, which premiered at Venice and Sundance film festivals and Abinash Bikram Shah’s Lori. There are poetic films about the state of the environment like Mahera Omar’s Even the Shore Drowns and Milaap by Marvi Mazhar, Abuzar Madhu and Zohaib Kazi. Films capture the incredible cultural heritage and beliefs prevalent in South Asia, Soch Video’s Legend of Pir Mangho and Shambhavi Kaul’s Slow Shift, taking us on a visual journey of Hampi.
Films take a look at family relationships in the face of adversity like Anya Raza’s On the Mountain and like Zarrar Kahn’s In Flames, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival, representing a mother daughter bond. Rajitha Hettiarachchi and Kavindu Sivaraj‘s Lifebuoy and Elham Ehsas’s Yellow celebrate carving out one’s own space and Roohi Kashfi’s B for Naoo and Suman Sen’s debut Oscar® Qualified short film The Silent Echo celebrate the joys of friendship. The films animate South Asia’s shared history like Puffball studios & Project Dastaan’s Rest in Paper and SeaBirds. They highlight quiet heroes like in Umar Riaz’s The After: A Chef’s Wish, the inspiring story of Chef Fatima Ali and her legacy and Ripan Kumar Das, Poster, about a struggling tutor.
