The 20th annual Tasveer film festival just took place in Seattle.
This was a very special year for Tasveer as it marks the second year of the Tasveer market, and the second year of the Tasveer Film Center.
The Tasveer film festival was, “originally founded in 2002 by Rita Meher and Farah Nousheen, is a Seattle-based nonprofit to inspire social change through South Asian cinema and storytelling.” The two women started the festival shortly after the 9/11 attacks as a space to tell South Asian stories and curb prejudices. Tasveer is the only Oscar qualifying South Asian film festival in the world.
The Tasveer Market includes networking events, live pitches, 1-1 meetings, panels, and educational AI workshops for industry badge holders. In 2024, they received 300 unique project submissions, curating 63 live project pitches, and announcing 7 deals at the closing of the Market. This year they awarded $160,000 to emerging South Asian filmmakers across three competitive pitch events. The four winners of the fund from this year will premiere their films at Tasveer 2026.
As the South Asian diaspora continues to expand, Tasveer welcomes discourse, providing financial, physical, and community support to uplift these stories, and bring people together. The word family was repeated often throughout the event, and also felt, through laughs, dancing, and food.
“The most meaningful moments were sometimes the unexpected ones, the conversations you had on the stairs, but would keep thinking about” said Vivek Bahl, board vice president, in his closing remarks.
“For me the most incredible thing” said Rita Mehr, co-founder “is that people walk through the doors of this space from all over the world and consider it home”.
When asked about their favorite films from the festival Rita Mehr, co-founder and Anushree Anushree Shukla, Associate Director, both mentioned the film Little Jaffna, directed by Lawrence Valin. This film also won the Jury Choice award for Best Feature Narrative, meaning audiences should look out for it at the Oscars. The film follows a young Tamil police officer, Micheal, as he goes undercover to take down a ruthless gang, in Paris’s “Little Jaffna”, a vibrant Tamil neighborhood.
The movie explores the dual nature of identity, both identities assigned internally and externally. Micheal is an orphan, born and brought up in Paris as a Catholic. His upbringing, position as a police officer, as well as patches of white skin due to vitiligo distance him from the community he is assigned to infiltrate. This is a powerful story, raising questions about identity, joy, and morality.
Little Jaffna was just one of many avant-garde, difficult, and beautiful films showcased this weekend at Tasveer. Be sure to look out for these films, we will need them to hold us over as we await Tasveer 2026 next October.
Dani Madan is a storyteller, painter, writer, and aspiring journalist from Seattle,Washington. She believes strongly in connecting, exploring truths through narrative, and the role of writing in shaping the world. She loves to write, get creative, and spend time outside when not doing the other two things.
