LIFF 2025 – The Future of British Asian filmmaking – panel urge creativity and following passions
🎥 Niche is the new superpower
🎥 Sprinkle magic dust on your project – get a star or well-known producer involved and/or find respected advisor-mentor
🎥 Shoot whatever you can – regardless of budget constraints – don’t stall…
🎥 Use your identity to get beyond the crowd
🎥 Increasing opportunities to film abroad and get cash/tax benefits
🎥 More generally – Be nice and friendly and have several and different projects in play…
SIX LEADING filmmakers with South Asian heritage backgrounds came together to discuss challenges and opportunities in the UK film industry and beyond, during the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF – July 16-23) – expressing hope and urging filmmakers to be committed to the craft.
While the general climate of the global film industry remains challenging with budget restrictions and almost continuous disruption in terms of conventional business models, all the six filmmakers expressed some optimism and encouraged those starting out not to be deterred or disheartened – and to keep going!
Filmmaker Rajesh Thind, who made the documentary ‘Defiance – Fighting the Far Right’, screened on Channel 4 last year, said: “The tricky bit now is that it is not as hard to raise the money, it’s getting the thing out there. It’s getting discovered, it’s the distribution, the exhibition, it’s getting anybody to give a s**t.
“TV and film are a sort of cool media. The internet is warm, passionate. If you’ve got a passion, you go to the Internet, you can find your people and that’s an amazing thing. And that kind of passion is actually the secret sauce that the likes of Netflix and Channel 4 and other big channels are desperate for – that niche passion. When audiences say, ‘oh my god – that’, that’s for me, in a world where there’s not that much for me. So, I would actually advise a degree of optimism among you for that reason.”
Thind said that many mainstream broadcasters were panicky because audience numbers for live programming continue to drop.
Elham Ehsas, an actor-writer-director, who made the Bafta nominated ‘Yellow’ short film (2023), said he just got his mates together and made this film with just £3,000.
“When it got nominated for a Bafta, ‘(they) asked who are your producers?’ I just got all my friends on it and they all Bafta nominees. My DOP (director of photography) shot it for free, and so a lot of it, is taking the people with you and doing the journey together.”
He urged aspiring filmmakers to be resourceful and not worry too much about having a big budget and said that with an Afghan background, he would sometimes work that into a script, knowing some are keen to back films dealing with that culture, heritage, or region.
His most recent short, ‘There will come soft rain’ – which screened at LIFF’s New British Asian shorts programme later that day (July 19), just after this panel discussion – is inspired by the climate crisis and has a young Muslim background woman looking to dig up her father’s grave, as she fears it will be soon submerged.
Nathalia Syam, who made her award-winning debut feature ‘Footprints on Water’ (2023) with Indian indie star Adil Hussain in the lead role, explained that initially her film was conceived as a Malayalam language film. Hailing from Kerala in South India, she spends some of her time there working on films.
“It is about undocumented migrants in Britain and we needed Sri Lankan Tamils, then Sinhalese and Polish, and so these languages all became relevant and our producer Mohaan Nadaar said: ‘Why don’t we make it an English, British feature?’ All those languages are relevant. I feel festivals, like LIFF, offer an ecosystem and you see a lot of filmmakers come from India and there are opportunities with the co-production treaty (UK has signed with several countries including India) and some states in India also offer incentives, it’s all worth checking out,” said Syam.
Leesa Gazi, who has a theatre background with the Komola Collective and made the feature, ‘A House Named Shahana’, set in Bangladesh, said it was helpful to have a film mentor and some producers were actively looking out for young talent.
“People want to give back at some point – there’s a lot of those people sat around at home waiting for some young buck to call them and say, be my guru. Think about that – who’s your ideal advisor…”
Pravesh Kumar is the founder and artistic director of Rifco, a theatre company that has branched out into film and produced a new short called ‘Pink or Blue’ which also screened later that day as part of LIFF’s New British Asian shorts programme.
He was keen to dispel the notion that South Asians produce niche work for niche audiences.
Having been in theatre for many years and producing countless successful plays and musicals, and having made a feature, ‘Little English’ which premiered at LIFF in 2023 and was distributed in cinemas up and down the country, he encouraged filmmakers to overcome prejudice and narrow-mindedness when pitching projects.
“My last show ‘Frankie Goes to Bollywood’ was at the Southbank Centre and over 40,000 people saw it. When people say there’s no audience or it’s niche, my company’s constantly proving them wrong. I grew up watching everything white on TV & film, I could relate to that. And just like that, I think audiences can relate to our stories too.”
He said that it is incorrect for producers to look at projects in terms of niche audience marketing only.
“I met a producer who was pitching a story set in the Pakistani community and a German producer said to him: ‘We don’t have any Pakistani people in Germany’. The producer said: ‘My favourite show was ‘Alvin and The Chipmunks’ – and we didn’t have a big community of chipmunks’.”
Gitika Buttoo, who also has a theatre background, and whose debut short, ‘Before I do’ first screened at BFI Flare and in the New British Asian shorts section, said that collaboration was important too.
Her film is written by Afshan D’souza-Lodhi, who is well known for her theatre writing.
“She’s a brilliant writer and the film came from an idea we were just talking about as mates. I hadn’t even come out when we first met and in the story, we put a South Asian woman at the forefront of the story and said: ‘Let’s be unapologetically queer and explore sexuality in a way that feels fearless and moves the story on from just coming out, and ooh, will I be accepted?”
Her film is about polyamory – www.asianculturevulture.com interviewed Buttoo just before its Flare screening earlier this year.
Cary Rajinder Sawhney, the director and founder of LIFF, moderated.
The talk was sponsored by Rifco.
See links below for more on these filmmakers and their work as covered on www.asianculturevulture.com
Links
Rajesh Thind – Defiance
https://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/defiance-fighting-the-far-right-tv-programme-charts-trauma-of-violent-racism-in-1970s-and-1980s-and-resistance/
Nathalia Syam – Footprints on Water
https://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/uk-asian-film-festival-25th-edition-closes-in-style-as-indian-film-stars-grace-final-curtain-and-flame-award-winners-footprints-on-water-interviews-as-well/
Leesa Gazi – Komola Collective
https://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/indigo-giant-entertaining-thoughtful-and-relevant-to-us-today/
Pravesh Kumar – Little English
https://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/little-english-from-single-screens-to-cineworld-and-vue-director-pravesh-kumars-powerful-call-to-see-in-the-cinema-and-review-too/
Gitika Buttoo – Before I do
https://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/before-i-do-bfi-flare-beyond-acceptance-and-dreaming-freely-video-interview/
