Filmmakers Rucha Chitnis and Alka Raghuram in person!
3rd i’s signature shorts program brings filmmakers into conversation together from South Asia to California and throughout the Diaspora. From short-form documentaries to dramatic narratives, and genres ranging from Sci-Fi to comedy to horror, this year’s edition tackles stories of relationships, identity, and social justice.
GANGA, Alka Raghuram, (3rd i Fest alum) (USA, 2023, 2:23 min)
An experimental first-person account of the sacred significance of rivers in Indian mythology, and their environmental degradation.
VAN VERSUS VIKAS (Forest Versus Progress), Rucha Chitnis, (3rd i Fest alum) (USA, 2023, 15 min)
A film chronicling the resistance of an Adivasi (tribal/indigenous) family, along with other activists, to the destruction of forests and surrounding ecosystems from development projects in Mumbai.
FLY, Aditya Verma, (India, 2023, 3 min) (Animation)
Meet Sange, Anicat, and Fakeer, intergalactic animated characters who adventurously travel through space and time on their surfboards and jet packs.
THE LIE GAME, Kalyan Sura (USA, 2018,15 min)
A delicate, profound, and seductive short film about a computer scientist and her lost love, and about the fundamental choices defining us.
I DON’T FEEL LIKE KNOWING YOU (Ancora Non so), Maaria Sayed, (Italy, 2023, 15 min)
Sensual, sun-drenched, and breezy scenes pull us into Fatema’s experience of adolescence as an exploratory and sensual time. Fatema is an Indian Muslim teenager living in an Italian small town. She spends her summer blending in with her friends, but when a burqa-clad teenager moves into her neighborhood, their cultural similarities are brought to the surface.
CRAZY FOR BOLLYWOOD, Imran J. Khan (USA, 2022, 6 min)
Raj introduces his family to his unique girlfriend, Priyanka: a woman who believes life is a Bollywood movie and she is the heroine.
MOSHARI, Nuhash Humayun (Bangladesh, 2022, 21 min)
Rich with allegory and pathos, MOSHARI serves up a terrifying dystopian world where death comes at night. Set in Dhaka, Bangladesh, among the last surviving members of mankind, two sisters must learn to protect themselves from mysterious blood-sucking nocturnal demons. Winner of the 2022 SXSW Midnight Shorts Grand Jury Prize.
