Festival circuit guide for South Asian films

A South Asian film does not enter the international festival circuit through one door. It enters through a specific section of a specific festival, in a specific year, with a premiere status that the festival has agreed to, and everything after that depends on which door opened first. Dukhtar's route in 2014 is a clean case study because the production notes record each stop and the awards record which of them paid off.

The mechanics are the same for Indian and Pakistani productions, and they are mostly administrative rather than artistic. Programmers select; producers submit; sales agents negotiate; festivals compete for premieres. Understanding the order of those steps explains why some excellent films travel and others never leave home.

The circuit is not one circuit

There are at least four separate routes, and a film usually takes one of them. The North American premiere route runs through Toronto, Sundance and Telluride. The European route runs through Berlin, Cannes, Locarno, Venice and the autumn London and Busan season. The Asian regional route runs through Busan, Tokyo, Singapore and the Indian festivals. The diaspora and community route runs through smaller events in New York, London, Toronto and the Gulf, often programmed by South Asian organisations rather than by the big festivals.

Dukhtar used three of the four in a single year. That is unusual for a first feature and it was made possible by timing: a September Toronto premiere sits at the start of the autumn cluster, which lets a film move to Busan and London within weeks while the reviews are still current.

The first door: a premiere festival

Toronto's Discovery section is designed for first and second features by emerging directors, which made it the natural target for a debut. The film premiered there on 5 September 2014, and the section matters more than the red carpet: Discovery is where programmers from other festivals, sales agents and critics with space for unknown titles do their looking.

Sundance runs a World Cinema Dramatic Competition for narrative features from outside the United States, and Locarno runs an international competition alongside its larger Piazza Grande screenings and its Filmmakers of the Present strand. Both are viable first doors for a South Asian film, and both have their own premiere requirements. The specific rules change year to year, so the only safe approach is to read the current regulations for the edition you are targeting rather than rely on what a previous film did.

Busan and the Asian route

Busan pairs a festival with a large film market, and its Asian cinema strands are where a Pakistani or Indian independent film meets the buyers, programmers and fund representatives who work the region full time. Dukhtar screened there in October 2014, in the same month as its London and São Paulo dates.

The Asian route is also where a film can build a second life after the western premiere cycle ends. A title that has already played Toronto can be programmed in Busan, Singapore or Kolkata without the pressure of being a discovery, and each of those bookings adds a territory, a review and a line to the sales sheet.

What Dukhtar's run looked like

The pattern is worth noting. The festival that generated the most visible coverage, Toronto, gave the film no award. The awards came from smaller events with South Asian programming, and the theatrical release in the United Kingdom came from a distributor, Mara Pictures, that acquired the film after seeing it on the circuit and released it in British cinemas in April 2015.

Premieres are currency

Festivals trade in firsts. A world premiere is worth more to a programmer than a national premiere, which is worth more than a local screening, and the hierarchy is enforced by rules rather than by courtesy. An unannounced screening at a small festival can cost a film its chance at a larger one.

The sequence that worked for Dukhtar is a standard one for a debut: a major North American premiere, then a rapid autumn circuit in Europe and Asia, then a distributor deal, then smaller regional festivals after the theatrical window. Each step lowered the cost of the next, because a programmer who sees a Toronto selection line in a submission reads it as a signal.

Paperwork, deadlines and the sales agent

• Submission deadlines for the autumn festivals fall in the first half of the year, months before a print is finished, so films are submitted on the basis of a rough cut and a director's statement.
• Premiere status must be declared at submission and honoured afterwards; breaking it can void an invitation.
• Screeners, subtitles and a press kit in English are the minimum package, and a sales agent handles them for films that have one.
• Travel is the part nobody budgets for. Visas for cast and crew are arranged per country and can fail at short notice.
• Pakistani and Indian productions face the same paperwork, though not always the same visa timelines, and selection is made on the film rather than on the passport.

What festivals do not do

They do not fund the film, they do not guarantee a release, and they rarely pay a screening fee that covers the cost of attending. What they provide is a room, a review, and a line on a poster. For Dukhtar, that was enough to secure a UK distributor and an Oscar submission, and not enough to make the film profitable in Pakistan.

That is the honest arithmetic of the circuit. A festival run is a marketing campaign with a distribution function attached, and it works best for films that already have a sales agent, a completed print and a plan for what happens after the closing night.