Kathmandu Film Festival Touches Down in October With Heavy Hitters
Nepal's getting its own festival moment, and they're bringing real ones to the opening.
Kathmandu's stepping into the film festival game for the first time, and they're not playing it small. The inaugural Kathmandu Film Festival runs October 30–November 1, with legendary Indian actor Shabana Azmi and film historian Marco Müller on the guest list—the kind of names that signal a festival wants to be taken seriously from day one.
The three-day event is bringing 40 films from 14 countries, split across different competition strands including an International Panorama and a Nepal Panorama focused on local shorts. It's backed by Kathmandu Metropolitan City, which means there's actual institutional weight behind this thing.
For a film festival launching in South Asia right now, this is the play: curate real cinema, book respected voices in the industry, and build something sustainable that centers both international work and your own backyard. Whether KFF sticks around and builds something lasting will depend on execution, but the foundation looks solid. Nepal's always had stories worth telling—now they've got a platform to tell them on the world stage.
Read the full story at Variety → https://variety.com/2026/film/festivals/shabana-azmi-marco-muller-inaugural-kathmandu-film-festival-1236934643/
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