Dharamshala International Film Festival organizers announce Film Lab South Asia

The organizers of the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) have announced that they will be partnering with the Festival des 3 Continents' Produire au Sud (PAS) workshop in collaboration with the French Institute in India to launch Film Lab South Asia in Dharamshala.

The lab will be held from 31 October to 4 November 2022. 

A statement by the organizers read, “With this new undertaking, DIFF hopes to take its support of regional independent filmmaking to the next level. Not only does PAS share with DIFF the same ideals of valuing and promoting independent cinema, its long experience in running training workshops around the world is exactly the kind of professional support, resource and network that filmmakers in South Asia can take advantage of and benefit from."

The training workshop will focus on the development and packaging of film projects suitable for international co-productions and is aimed at emerging producer–director teams, which will benefit from the initiative. The eligible projects includes fiction features in the development stage wherein the producer has some previous experience in production.

Five teams from South Asia will get a chance to work with mentors, which include producer Claire Lajoumard, script consultant Delphine Agut, filmmaker and producer Shrihari Sathe, pitch expert and producer Stefano Tealdi, and Isabelle Glachant, founder of International Sales Boutique agency Asian Shadows. Other mentors for the workshop will be confirmed at a later stage. The call for entries is open and the deadline for submission is 20 August 2022.

An annual event held since 1979 in Nantes, France, the Festival des 3 Continents is devoted to the cinemas of Asia, Africa and Latin America.