For the past three years, Screen Southasia has been made possible by our close collaboration with Film Southasia, a Kathmandu-based festival that has helped us curate great documentaries from across the region. Moving forward, Himal will be running Screen Southasia independently as Film Southasia transitions to a subscription model for their archive. We wish them well, and remain committed to promoting diverse storytelling from passionate creators. That's where you come in.
Do you know any visual storytellers looking for a platform to showcase their work about Southasia? If so, we want to hear from you! We're looking for documentaries, new and old, short and feature-length, to showcase in our programme.
If you wish to pitch your film to us, please email editorial@himalmag.com. And scroll below to check out the documentary we’ll be screening next month!
Length: 69 minutes
Synopsis The wealth and opulence of West Asia is built on the labour of cheap labour from foreign countries, many of them from the Southasian region. In 2009, four young Nepali men left their villages for the Gulf. Their stories, often disillusioning and, as often, empowering, are captured in Tseten’s 2012 film In Search of the Riyal.
The Riyalists is a 12-year chronicle of Nepali labour migration that illuminates the experiences of the up to three million Nepalis who have been in the Gulf since then.
He has been a recipient of grants from Busan, Jan Vrijman Fund, IDFA Bertha Fund, Sundance Documentary Institute and the Asian Cultural Council. His films include the award-winning Who Will Be a Gurkha (IDFA feature length competition), Trembling Mountain, and a trilogy on Nepali migrant workers in the Gulf States.
Most recently he released Diversity Plaza, about the Himalayan community in Jackson Heights, New York, and The Lama’s Son, about the crumbling ‘shangrila’. He wrote the original screenplay for the feature Mukundo (2000), Nepal’s entry to the Academy Awards, as well as KARMA. He is a graduate of Dr Graham’s School in India, Amherst College and Columbia University in the US.