Humans in the Loop
2025-10-12 12:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Aranya Sahay’s engaging and poignant debut feature, HUMANS IN THE LOOP, offers a nuanced exploration of Artificial Intelligence technology in India through the perspective of a tribal woman’s experience and her beliefs in the natural order.
The film portrays Nehma, an Adivasi woman who returns to her Jharkhand village with her children, post-divorce. To sustain her family, she becomes a data annotator, a role reflecting the real-life involvement of many indigenous tribal women in India’s burgeoning AI industry.
This uniquely whimsical film weaves a story about the significant yet often unrecognized contributions of women from rural backgrounds in India who undertake meticulous data-labeling tasks foundational to the development of AI.
Sahay explores identity, technology, and empowerment through Nehma and her children’s journey by empathetically exploring how the lived experiences of data annotators can influence AI biases.
The film is a tale that is both cautionary and endearing, prompting viewers to reconsider AI’s ethical dimensions and its impact on social conditioning and on formalizing societal biases, as well as its effects on marginalized communities.
PREMIERED – Mumbai Film Festival (MAMI), 2024
WINNER – 16th Bengaluru International Film Festival: FIPRESCI Award and “Best Film”
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3rd i Shorts 2025
2025-10-12 13:45 | Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Q&A with filmmakers!
From comic relief to social insights, the 2025 edition of 3rd i’s signature short films spans vast differences—both literally and metaphorically—with films and filmmakers from South Asia to California and throughout the Diaspora. This year’s selection of narratives and docs lifts up stories of immigration, relationships, identity, gender and sexuality, and social justice.
HARIJ WEDS SAJILI, Prataya Saha (USA, 2025, 19 min)
A whimsical tale about a young bride in India who fakes her suicide to reclaim her freedom, with the help of a sex worker.
ZARI, Shruti Parekh (USA, 2025, 19 min)
American teen Neelu feels like a fish out of water amidst preparations for her sister’s wedding in Delhi—until she forges a brief and unexpected connection with Zeyb, a quiet sari-store clerk who moonlights as an internet drag queen.
THE TEST, Benjamin Sutton (UK 2025, 4 min)
A hilarious short film about a man who gets more than he bargained for from a routine eye test.
ESPERANZA, Shruti Parekh (USA, 2023, 18 min)
When an immigrant taxi driver in upstate New York takes a hopeful young couple to an unmarked Canadian border crossing, he must confront how far he will go for his American Dream.
THE PATEL MOTEL STORY, Amar Shah and Rahul Rohatgi (USA, 2025, 13 min)
The Patel Motel Story reveals how South Asian immigrants, led by one undocumented man’s journey from Gujarat, built a hotel empire—transforming American hospitality through resilience, identity, and belonging.
PORELESS, Harris Doran (Co-produced by Fawzia Mirza), (USA 2025, 13 min)
Fun and farcical—a fabulous queer Muslim beauty entrepreneur must figure out how to compete in a Shark Tank-like product pitch contest after suffering an untimely allergic reaction.
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Your Touch Makes Others Invisible
2025-10-12 15:45 | Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Q&A with director Rajee Samarasinghe!
YOUR TOUCH MAKES OTHERS INVISIBLE, directed by Rajee Samarasinghe, is a surreal and lyrical exploration of disappearances in a small post-war community in northern Sri Lanka, where memories of interactions between the Tamils and the Sinhalese linger.
Fusing allegorical magic realism and investigative documentary, and made collaboratively with impacted locals, the film is an examination of thousands of missing persons through 26 years of civil war in Sri Lanka. The nonfiction elements in this film are structured by a fictional narrative thread, which tells the tale of a mother who loses her son to a supernatural entity plaguing her community—a nod to the actual disappearances in the region.
Sinhalese filmmaker Samarasinghe’s feature debut is both a documentary about forced disappearances during the government’s war against the Tamil Tiger separatists, and a hushed, often nonverbal tone poem on the themes of mourning, trauma, and absence. The hybrid near-impressionistic film creates a shifting monument to memories, and is a stirring, staunch defiance of the inevitability of disavowed justice.
“25 New Faces of Independent Film, 2020” – Filmmaker Magazine
PREMIERE – International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2025
WINNER – Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, 2025: collective New Cinema Award
SPECIAL JURY MENTION – Austin Asian American Film Festival, 2025: “Creative Vision”
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INTRO TO NONFICTION STORYTELLING WITH ALKA RAGHURAM
2026-03-29 14:00 | Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
FREE – seating is limited.
Register here
Have a Story You Can’t Wait to Tell?
The “Intro to Nonfiction Storytelling” class is a free, 2-hour introduction to shaping real life into a cinematic narrative. This workshop will help storytellers develop tools to transform personal experience or a topic they are passionate about into a story with structure. Participants will gain a sharpened story concept.
Ready for the next steps beyond “Intro To Nonfiction Storytelling”?
Check out Alka’s 4-Week Documentary Writing Intensive, an in-person development lab designed to help you transform raw material into narrative clarity. Over four focused weeks, you will move from idea to articulation — shaping a documentary concept with structure, voice, stakes, and ethical intention.
Sundays, April 12 – May 3, 2026
2-4pm
Artists’ Television Access, San Francisco
More info and class registration: https://www.junoon.pictures/junoonlabs
Alka Raghuram is an award-winning filmmaker and a multidisciplinary artist. She has made several fiction, experimental, and documentary films. She was awarded the L’Oreal Woman of Worth Filmmaker Award for her script The Conqueror at Tribeca All Access. Her script Ayna was a finalist at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Alka frequently collaborates with other artists to create narrative performances and installations. Some of her collaborations include “Yatra” with Kathak and Flamenco dancers Pandit Chitresh Das and Antonio Hidalgo Paz; “Agni” with choreographer Charlotte Moraga and musician Alam Khan, and a photo, video and art installation Inspired by Burqa Boxers at the Locarno Film Festival. She recently received Creative Work Fund for a multimedia project called “Invoking The River” about the river Yamuna’s mythological significance and its environmental degradation, in collaboration with Chitresh Das Institute of dance.
WINNER – Locarno Film Festival, co-production market top prize: Grant Open Doors
WINNER – Westlake International Documentary Festival, IDF Forum: Director of the Year
