For decades, Bengali cinema has told the world who we are. Now it’s time for the world’s Bengalis to tell their own stories – and to screen them where it matters most: at home.
Drishya gives diaspora filmmakers something they rarely get – a curated audience in Kolkata, watching their work not as foreign curiosity but as part of the Bengali film tradition. Short films by global Bengali filmmakers screen alongside Kolkata-made shorts, back to back, the way they belong.
An atmospheric open-air screening after dark opens the programme. Two full juried showcases on the final day give the work the audience it deserves. And a dedicated dialogue session brings the diaspora’s filmmakers face to face with Kolkata’s own film fraternity – directors, producers, technicians – for a working conversation about what it would actually take to build a bridge between two film worlds that have been orbiting each other from a distance.
A Best Short Film award, presented at the closing ceremony, gives Drishya its own permanent marker – a recognition that the Bengali gaze now looks out from many more places than Tollygunge alone.
Every film is a homecoming of its own. Drishya is where the Bengali lens finally turns back toward Bengal.
The sun goes down, the Amphitheatre lights up, and Drishya begins the way cinema should – in the dark, under the sky. A curated mixed programme screening diaspora and Kolkata shorts back to back, chosen for atmosphere as much as craft. This is the evening that reminds you why you fell in love with film in the first place.
The main daytime showcase begins. A juried screening block in the Auditorium – the largest available audience – where diaspora-made and Kolkata-made short films share the same programme, the same screen, and the same applause. The jury watches from the house.
The showcase continues. A second juried block completing the main programme – same format, same jury, same stage. Together with Programme I, this is the body of work from which the Best Short Film will be chosen.
The screenings put diaspora and Kolkata filmmakers in the same room. This session gives that encounter a working agenda. A panel and facilitated discussion on co-productions, crew and technical exchange, access to Kolkata’s production infrastructure for diaspora-initiated projects, and distribution routes between the diaspora festival circuit and the Bengali film world. It closes with named next steps and a follow-up owner – not a handshake that evaporates after the panel ends.
A jury combining Bengal-based film fraternity figures and diaspora filmmakers deliberates across both screening blocks, then announces the winner at the Closing Ceremony – with a full screening of the winning film. Drishya’s closing marker, alongside Shabd’s literary award and Sankalpa’s pledge board, so all pillars land together at the end.