Berlinale Title ‘Lali’ to Open Tasveer Film Festival’s 21st Edition (EXCLUSIVE)

Seattle’s Tasveer Film Festival & Market has unveiled its 21st edition lineup: 136 films from 16 countries screening Oct. 13-18, opening with Sarmad Sultan Khoosat’s “Lali,” a Berlinale Panorama title, in its West Coast premiere.

The films, spanning more than 25 languages, tell stories from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tibet and their diasporas. This year’s theme, “Bring Your Story Home,” runs through the selection. For the second year, the festival will take place at the Tasveer Film Center in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood.

The 2026 lineup leans into several trends, with women telling personal stories in their own voices, animation arriving with what Tasveer described as real force, and filmmakers increasingly favoring images over exposition. Four films follow athletes, teams and the families behind them, spanning cricket to gymnastics, and turn on class, gender and who gets to belong: the same questions Tasveer says it has put onscreen for more than two decades. The festival will also present 12 LGBTQ+ films from six countries, continuing a strand of programming Tasveer has run since 2002.

Highlighted titles include the centerpiece film “Mayilaa,” directed by Semmalar Annam, in its North American premiere; the documentary “Breaking the Code,” directed by Ben Rekhi, from Washington State; the animated feature “The Chair,” directed by Triparna Maiti, in its Washington State premiere; the closing night film, Nepal’s Oscar contender “Elephants in the Fog,” directed by Abinash Bikram Shah, in its North America premiere.

Aparna Purohit, CEO of Aamir Khan Productions, will serve as chief guest and jury head for the festival and market. The 21st edition includes 20 world premieres, four North American premieres and four U.S. premieres.

Several selections have ties to Washington state, including “Gaa Ghar” (“Home”), about two people tracing their relationship back to the day they met as a visa runs out; “The Turning Point,” which imagines civil war reaching Seattle in the near future, following a man and his niece as they try to escape a violent militia; “Three Sisters,” centered on a family meal; “Eka,” about a video-game artist starting his own studio; and “Riding Time,” shot across three summers in Bradford, following a rider in Britain’s Pakistani tent-pegging circuit.

“I have been programming this festival for 21 years, and I am still not over this lineup,” said festival director Rita Meher, co-founder and executive director of Tasveer. “136 films, 35 world and North America premieres, filmmakers coming in from 16 countries. The sports films, the queer stories, the animation, all of it arrived with a boldness that tells me something has shifted in South Asian cinema.”

The Tasveer Film Market runs Oct. 13-15 and is now in its third year, billed as North America’s first global market dedicated to South Asian film. This year’s edition folds in the Co-Production Market Selects program, pitch sessions through the Tasveer Film Fund, industry panels, fireside conversations and networking events. Four filmmakers selected for the Film Fund will each walk away with a $35,000 grant to develop their next project.

“We are welcoming filmmakers, industry leaders, and audiences from all over the world, whether they’re flying in from Mumbai or coming from just down Rainier Avenue,” Meher said. “Then the market sends four of these filmmakers home with funding to make the next one. The public is welcome to join us–come be part of it.”

Public funders backing the 21st edition include King County, the City of Seattle and the Port of Seattle, joined by AARP, 4 Culture, the Conru Foundation, the ACLU of Washington, Visit Seattle and Tampa Bay Wave. The festival’s awards are sponsored separately by the RAGS Foundation, founded by Sridhar Tayur and Gunjan Kedia.

For more than 20 years, the nonprofit Tasveer has worked to give South Asian storytellers a platform in film, art and other media. Its mission since 2002 has centered on stories about gender, sexuality, caste, class, religion and race that don’t always find space elsewhere. In 2025, the organization moved into exhibition, taking over Columbia City’s former Ark Lodge Cinemas and reopening it as the Tasveer Film Center, where films now run daily.