Dharamshala International Film Festival to stream festival entries online free

Tenzing Sonam, co-director of the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), has announced on Twitter an initiative by the festival to bring films from its previous editions online and enable audiences at home to watch them.

On the DIFF website, Sonam wrote, "Today, we are going through exceptionally strange and difficult times. COVID-19 is reshaping the world as we know it and no one knows what awaits us on the other side. Here at DIFF, we are trying to keep our spirits afloat by turning once again to cinema to inspire and encourage us. The deep humanism and artistic insights that inform the best of cinema are as relevant in the age of coronavirus as they have always been.

"With this in mind, we reached out to DIFF alumni and requested them to make their films available for screening online on the DIFF website. The response from our filmmakers has been overwhelmingly positive, although some, understandably, are unable to share their films due to contractual obligations. We are deeply grateful to all the filmmakers who rallied to our call," he said.

The DIFF Screening Room is a specially curated selection of the festival's alumni films available for streaming online for all. The selection of films will be updated every two weeks.

There are four films currently available — Sean McAllister’s documentary A Syrian Love Story (2015), the experimental Greek film Tripoli Cancelled (2017) directed by Naeem Mohaiemen, and two fiction films, Jeon Soo-Il’s A Korean In Paris (2015) and Prasanna Vithanage’s With You Without You (2012).

DIFF was started in 2012 by filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Sonam. The previous edition of the festival was held from 7 through 10 November 2019.