Sundance Winner 'Against The Tide' Is The Only Documentary Competing Among 14 Features In The South Asia Competition At Jio MAMI 2023

After winning a special Jury prize in Vérité Filmmaking at Sundance Film Festival 2023, National Award-winning filmmaker Sarvnik Kaur's internationally acclaimed documentary feature AGAINST THE TIDE is making its South Asian premiere at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023. 

Against The Tide is the only documentary selected among 14 features in the South Asia Competition section 

The film which premiered in World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance has won eight awards including UN Perception Change Award at Visions du Réel 2023, Grand Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at Seattle IFF 2023, Sustainable Future Award at Sydney IFF 2023 and Best Feature Award at Ice Docs 2023. It recently won Best Documentary at International South Asian Film Festival Canada and is also nominated for Asian Pacific Screen Award (APSA) for Best Documentary Feature.

The 97 minute film in Koli, Marathi, Hindi language is about Two friends, both indigenous Koli Fishermen in Mumbai, who are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.

Excited about the India Premiere of Against The Tide, the National-Award winning filmmaker Sarvnik Kaur says, “I am absolutely thrilled to begin our film's journey in India with Mumbai: the inspiration, setting and very reason for why it came into existence. There is a sense of homecoming, and I am really excited to show the film to my city and its people. We cannot wait to celebrate this moment with Ganesh, Rakesh and their families gathered together” 

The producer Koval Bhatia adds, “We always wanted to launch our film domestically starting with Mumbai, and it's finally happening. We cannot wait to find out how audiences here respond to the film, and we hope to change minds and hearts, both about the issues in our film and also towards documentaries!”

The DOP of the film is Ashok Meena, Atanas Georgiev (Honeyland) and Blagoja Nedelkovki are the editors and Moinak Bose is the sound designer. Igor Vasilev has done the music. 

The film produced by Snooker Club Films and A Little Anarky Films in co-production with Les Films de l'Œil Sauvage with the support of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Doc Society Climate Story Fund, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Catapult Film Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, the Sundance Institute, SFFILM, AlterCine Foundation, Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in collaboration with the CNC, Procirep Angoa.

Mumbai fishermen Rakesh and Ganesh are inheritors of the great Koli knowledge system—a way to harvest the sea by following the moon and the tides. Rakesh has kept faith in the traditional fishing methods while Ganesh has moved away from them, embracing technology. AGAINST THE TIDE is a tale of deep friendship and rising resentment between the two men, against the backdrop of an adoring sea, which is increasingly turning hostile because of climate change.

About Sarvnik Kaur

Sarvnik Kaur is a documentary filmmaker whose work takes a skeptical stance towards the ‘grand narratives' of modernism and ‘Scientific Certainties'. Made of moments that hide anxiety and conflict just beneath the surface of the normal and the mundane, her films speak of the predicament of BEING HUMAN in our times.

Her latest feature documentary ‘Against the Tide' premiered at Sundance 2023 where she bagged the Special Jury Award for Verite Filmmaking. The film since then has received several awards including the Grand Jury at the Seattle International, the Best Documentary Award at IceDocs, the UN Perception Change Award at Visions-du-Reel, the Sustainability Award at Sydney International, The Warsaw Peace Award and also the Paznun City Freedom Award at Millenium Docs Against Gravity.

Her first film ‘Soz – A Ballad of Maladies' was awarded the President of India's 64th National Award for best debut direction besides bagging the best film at IDSFFK 2017 and the Ram Bahadur Trophy for Best Film at the Film South Asia 2018. Her films have been part of several PHD thesis of film scholars at New York University, Harvard University, JawaharLal University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences etc. She is a HotDocs Accelerator Lab, Chicken & Eggs Eggcelerator lab and IDFA Academy fellow. Her films have been supported by Catapult Film Fund, Sundance Documentary Fund, San Francisco Film Fund, IDFA Bertha Fund etc. 

About KOVAL BHATIA

Koval Bhatia is a Filmmaker and producer based in India. She has been heading A Little Anarky Films for 12 years, during which time she has directed and produced commercials, documentaries and TV shows. She began her journey as an international producer with Against The Tide, which she has pitched at multiple markets and forums across the world. Her short documentary as director and producer titled She Run The World, premiered at The Smithsonian and at Hot Docs Canada. She is currently a Getting Real Fellow at the International Documentary Association (IDA). 

Koval is a graduate from Eurodoc and a recipient of the Emerging Producer's Bursary from the World Congress for Science and Factual Producers, and her work has been supported by Sundance Documentary Fund, Hot Docs, Catapult Film Fund, Docs By The Sea, SFFILM, Al Jazeera, and DOKLeipzig. She is currently serving as Chair of Jury at the IDA Awards and as a mentor with In-Docs. 

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