South Asian Films at 68th London Film Festival

Blog, Highlights, Projects / Oct 24, 2024

By Lalit Mohan Joshi

Welcoming everyone at the just launched London Film Festival, Ben Roberts, Chief Executive, British Film Institute, says that in an age when we have everything, everywhere, all at once, it is still in these festivals where films come to life with filmmakers and audiences in the same forum.

The 12-day 68th London Film Festival (9th to 20th October) is showcasing more than 150 films at the BFI South Bank, Picturehouse Central, Piccadilly Circus and many other venues in London. A good number of these are Indian and South Asian films. 

Ever since its commencement in 1957, the London Film Festival has carried a clout. In 1958, during the second edition of the BFI London Film Festival, Yasujiroˉ Ozu’s ‘Tokyo Story’ received the first Sutherland Award. The following year, Satyajit Ray took the trophy with his classic ‘The World of Apu’. Ever since then, Indian and South Asian filmmakers have longed for their films to be showcased here.  

What is unique in this year’s package of South Asian films is the fact that most of them have been produced in USA, Canada, UK, Belgium, France and Germany. 

Many of these filmmakers were born and raised in the west but the content of their films is earthy, rooted in the ethos, politics and culture of India. 

Santosh (UK-France-Germany, 2024), a film by a British born Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri, has created a buzz for being a taut, north India-set thriller, where a housewife-turned-cop, is sucked into a high-profile case that has polarised the local community. 

Having been recently widowed, Santosh is considered a liability in a community where casteism and misogyny are an inextricable part of life. Furthermore, her reluctant inheritance of her husband’s job as police constable, is problematised by her having to deal with the death of a murdered teenager. Sandhya Suri’s deft thriller is a complex character study of a female cop whose moral conflict lays bare the oppression perpetuated in the name of caste.    

“A very good selection, three of them, ‘Santosh’, ‘Sister Midnight’ by Karan Kandhari and ‘All We Imagine as Light’ by Payal Kapadia have been to Cannes”, says Suman Bhuchar, Associate Editor for Asian Culture Vulture.  

Another strong film is Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light (France-India-Netherlands-Luxembourg, 2024) where the lives of three women intersect and overlap in a haunting drama that sees the city of Mumbai play a central role.

In the film, Prabha, Anu and Parvaty are employees at a hospital in Mumbai. They grapple daily with the opportunities and hardships of existence in the city. Balancing an immersive verité style with a touch of the surreal, Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning drama, captures the many shades of working-class life in Mumbai. The result is a profound and deeply humanist meditation on urban migration and dislocation.

The most entertaining film of this package is A Nice Indian Boy (USA-Canada, 2024) by Roshan Sethi. It’s an oft repeated run of the mill film where Naveen meets Jay and a whirlwind romance quickly leads to an engagement. But there’s an issue: Naveen has yet to introduce Jay to his family, and he isn’t quite what that they are expecting. Putting a fresh queer and Indian spin on the tropes of the rom-com, A Nice Indian Boy is a charming, warm-hearted celebration of love and acceptance.

Min Bahadur Bham’s captivating film Shambhala (Nepal- France-Norway, 2024), finds a young Nepalese woman embarking on a quest to find her missing husband in the Himalayas.

Tashi and Pema live in the Nepalese Himalayas. When Tashi goes missing around the time that Pema discovers she is pregnant, and with gossipy neighbours questioning her fidelity, Pema decides to embark on a search for her husband. She is joined by Tashi’s brother, a Buddhist monk. But as Pema begins to reflect on her own spirituality, the journey soon becomes one of self-discovery. 

In filmmaker Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon (India, 2024), a ragtag crew of filmmakers with no resources, end up creating a cult phenomenon. Malegaon is only six hours driving distance from Mumbai, the filmmaking capital of India. For Nasir Shaikh, one of the city’s residents who pretty much eats, sleeps and dreams movies, Bollywood is a distant yet alluring dream. Director Reema Kagti chronicles the heartwarming true story of Shaikh as he crowdsources a wave of ingenious spoof films that become a national phenomenon. 

Sister Midnight (UK, 2024) by Karan Kandhari is a genre-bending comedy about a frustrated and misanthropic newlywed who discovers certain feral impulses that land her in unlikely situations. Uma, a disillusioned newlywed with zero domestic skills, lives in her husband’s cramped one-room flat. Trapped in an unending domestic hell, she sets out to explore the city on her own, only to embrace fresh impulses and desires. With its dark physical comedy, feminist undertones and impressive mashing of genres, Sister Midnight is a strikingly distinctive feature that defies easy categorisation. 

Finally, the audiences would see the Shyam Benegal classic Manthan (1976). Shyam Benegal’s wife Nira Benegal will be the special guest when this potent, political landmark of Indian independent filmmaking – famously funded by 500,000 farmers – will be screened. It’s a film that explored the ugly truths of class and caste in rural Gujarat. 

Professor Rajinder Dudrah, of Birmingham City University, sums it all up as ‘exciting’. “London Film Festival always brings us a diverse range of films where promises of exciting stories make us sit up, watch and think. In the current global context where strife appears to be a constant, we need even more to see and hear from each other in pressing ways.”

More from Blog, Highlights, Projects