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South Asian Film Festival of Australia (SAFFA)

The South Asian Film Festival of Australia (SAFFA) launches in January 2023 across screens in Sydney and other parts of NSW. The festival aims to use cinema to bring film lovers from across Australia and South Asia closer. SAFFA will help audiences journey into the vast world of South Asian cinema and discover gems that may not necessarily get a run in theatres here.

Almost one third of Australia’s population was born overseas. Specifically, people born in South Asian countries constitute almost 5% of Australia’s population. The film festival will be an event for South Asian communities within Australia to come together and celebrate stories from their region. The common threads of language and traditions that cross borders will also provide an opportunity for community building amongst this vast migrant population.

South Asian cinema is having a moment, with India and Pakistan bagging several awards at Cannes, Sundance and Oscars in the past three years. Yet often, people from CALD and migrant backgrounds do not get a chance to enjoy and own the independent films and documentaries released in this highly prolific region while living in Australia. SAFFA would give Aussie audiences a chance to view and get excited about some of these award winners and other great independent films and documentaries from South Asia.

While there are some events and platforms within Australia to showcase South Asian storytelling most of these are standalone and fragmented attempts. Given the volume of the community and the promising work in filmmaking emerging from the South Asia diaspora, there is a need to provide a larger opportunity to new talent to showcase their work. SAFFA has been envisioned to celebrate regional cinema and spotlight the films made in the diverse languages of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and the Maldives. We will be inviting features, documentaries, and shorts from all these countries to be part of the festival.

A primary objective of SAFFA is to promote local Australian talent of South Asian backgrounds and give their unique stories much-deserved screentime. The 2023 iteration of the festival will also host a specially curated event on films made by Indigenous creatives from within South Asia in conversation with Indigenous Australian film creatives as a way of fostering an exchange of ideas and perspectives on creating from the margins.

SAFFA is created, curated and run entirely by Australian creatives and film lovers of South Asian backgrounds with support from film and cultural experts from Australia and South Asia. We are currently developing the festival and invite funds and resources to help us light up screens in 2023.