The British Council in partnership with BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival has announced that five queer-themed short films will be made available for the world to watch online for free, for 11 days every year, as part of Five Films For Freedom. This year, films from India, China, the UK, Croatia and Panama are being presented till 27 March.
The aim is for audiences to get to know more about the emerging LGBTQIA+ cinema across the world and understand the life and challenges faced by the community with themes including immigration, intimacy and isolation.
Mumbai filmmaker Arun Fulara’s debut short film Sunday is part of this year’s #FiveFilmsForFreedom selection. The film, which has already travelled widely to more than 50 world festivals, examines the desire and loneliness of a middle-aged man on his weekly visit to the barber.
Cinestaan Curates: Sunday is a gentle, heart-warming film about imagined possibilities
Speaking about Sunday, and the #FiveFilmsForFreedom campaign, Arun Fulara said, “Sunday is a deeply personal film that came out of my own experience of loneliness and lack of intimacy in the urban sprawl that is Mumbai. To see that film transcend borders and touch so many people across the world is a testimony to how similar we all are, whatever culture and nationality we may belong to. The film started its journey just as the pandemic began and has, therefore, I feel, touched a raw nerve in these times of forced isolation and distancing. Being a part of the Five Films for Freedom campaign is a huge honour and deeply gratifying for our small team. While I am extremely glad that people across the world will now be able to see our film, I hope there comes a time when stories like this cease to be a reality.”
The other films on the programme are British-Nigerian director Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s short film For Love; Croatian comic artist and animation director Marko Dješka’s animated film All Those Sensations In My Belly; Panamanian director Judith Corro’s first film as scriptwriter and director, Birthday Boy (Vuelta Al Sol); and Chinese director Hao Zhou’s Frozen Out, an experimental short film.
Jonathan Kennedy, Director Arts India, British Council, said, “Throughout the world, #FiveFilmsForFreedom present diverse and unique stories from some cutting edge LGBTIQ+ filmmakers. With our partners in India and the UK, we aim to achieve greater empathy for and solidarity with the LGBTIQ+ community with thought-provoking short dramas on film. Arun Fulara’s beautifully subtle and sensitive film about a middle-aged man’s weekly Sunday trip to the barber brings a richness to #FiveFilmsForFreedom from an Indian LGBTIQ+ perspective for an international audience. We are delighted to partner with The Queer Muslim Project and others in India to share a festival of screenings, discussions and new artworks inspired by this year’s films — in the certain knowledge that love is a human right.”
In India, British Council has partnered with The Queer Muslim Project, a virtual network of Queer, Muslim and allied individuals in South Asia to celebrate and amplify the films. In addition to the films being shown online, they will be screened across various cities such as Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kharagpur, Kolkata and Guwahati. The offline screenings are being co-hosted with some of the largest LGBTQIA+ student-led groups across three premier Indian universities. The curation also includes a series of reels and Instagram Live with popular queer creators and youth media platforms, Yuvaa, We the Young India and Gaysi Family, roundtable discussions featuring filmmakers, and open mics.