Boudha-based cultural centre Lichhavi House is set to hold the first edition of its Licchavi Cinema Festival from 11-15 September in Kathmandu.
Supported by Kathmandu Metropolitan City and the European Union, Lichhavi House is set to bring together a curated list of films from Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Thailand, France, Germany, Japan and Russia.
The festival is a culmination of Licchavi House’s commitment to cinema and cultural dialogue, as well as founder and filmmaker Khyentse Norbu’s long-standing connection to Nepal, organisers say.
The collection of films explore everyday life, history, conflict, migration, rituals and the quiet changes that shape lives across generations in the mountains, cities, forests here at home and beyond.
The selection includes Abinash Bikram Shah’s acclaimed directorial debut Elephants in the Fog, which won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard category at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. And representing world cinema are Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, as well as celebrated Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria.
Organisers hope the festival will give Kathmandu audiences access to films that they might not have been able to view due to limited screening opportunities, creating engagement between Nepalis and international cinema.
“Nepal has produced films that have screened at Cannes, at Berlin, at festivals across the world. Yet here at home, access to serious cinema on a proper screen remains limited,” says festival curator Abishek Budhathoki. “That gap is part of why this festival exists.”
The festival seeks to place contemporary Asian cinema alongside works that have defined global history and tradition, including films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Payal Kapadia, Khyentse Norbu, Deepak Rauniyar, and Tashi Gyeltshen.
The festival’s emblem, the mythical protector and messenger Garuda that moves between realms, represents cinema, say organisers, which transcends place, language, and perspective.
“Nepal's own reality already has a language, in the way people speak, the way silence is held here, the way time moves differently between a village and a city, the way memory sits alongside belief,” says Budhathoki. “I am curious about how cinema gets sorted into arthouse and commercial, especially in a place like Nepal, where the medium is still so young. Those categories may describe the market more than they describe the language of cinema itself.”
