Event Details

Supported by Bajaj Beyond

Short Films, Big Impact: A Masterclass with Rohan Kanawade – 3:30 pm
Learn storytelling, direction, and how to bring your vision to life on screen from this award-winning filmmaker. Enhance your craft and gain valuable insights from Rohan’s filmmaking journey.

Five Films for Freedom Screenings – 5:00 pm & 8:00 pm

In partnership with BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, Five Films for Freedom is one of the British Council’s key global programmes, celebrating stories from communities around the world. Running since 2014, this programme makes five short films available online for free, over 12 days each year in March. We are excited to host an in-person screening, bringing these stories to the audience at the NCPA. Prior to the screenings, Rohan Kanawade, director of the Sundance-winning Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), will lead a Masterclass on Short Filmmaking.

This year’s selection features powerful stories of love, courage, secrets and betrayal:

Dragfox
English with English subtitles (8 mins)

By Lisa Ott (UK)

Struggling with their gender identity, eleven-year-old Sam feels alone and confused, not quite sure how to express the way they feel. That is until a mischievous neighbourhood fox (marvelously voiced by Ian McKellen) jumps through their window late one night, taking Sam on an all-singing, all-dancing journey of self-discovery and acceptance.

If I Make it to the Morning
Chinese with English subtitles (9 mins)

By Andre Shen (USA/China)

Accompanied by her overbearing mother, Chinese teenager Ziyi spends the final night of her cross-State college tour at her cool aunt’s apartment in New York. But as Ziyi starts to think this could be the perfect place to live and study, an unexpected revelation suddenly brings tension to the group.

NGGAK!!!
Bahasa Indonesian with English subtitles (8 mins)

By Oktania Hamdani and Winner Wijaya (Indonesia)

As they play an online game together, loved-up girlfriends Sekar and Bebi laugh, chat and send each other memes. But their simple bliss is shattered when Sekar’s mother phones to tell her she is to be set up with a potential partner. Can Sekar make her mother understand that she has already found the one?

We’ll Go Down in History
English with English subtitles (25 mins)

By Cameron Richards and Charlie Tidmas (UK)

The story of TRUK United, a grassroots, proudly trans football club formed in January 2021. Filmed over two years, this heartfelt documentary captures the highs and lows of the pioneering UK team on and off the pitch as they strive to create a safe haven for their community in the face of rising transphobia.

Wait, Wait, Now!
English with English subtitles (12 mins)

By Ramon Te Wake (New Zealand)

When best friends Alex and Sam are left at home for the night, they do what all teenage boys do: raid mum’s wardrobe, play dress ups, and create a fantasy world where they feel safe and accepted. Well, maybe that’s just what some boys do. But little do they know, the parents are on to them. Is there a safe bubble about to burst?

Admission on a first-come-first-served basis.