Sarvnik Kaur’s Against The Tide to make its South Asian premiere at MAMI festival

After winning a special Jury prize in Vérité Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival 2023, National Award-winning filmmaker Sarvnik Kaur’s acclaimed documentary feature, Against The Tide, will make its South Asian premiere at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2023. It 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 the International South Asian Film Festival Canada and is also nominated for the Asian Pacific Screen Award (APSA) for Best Documentary Feature.

The 97-minute-long film in Koli, Marathi, Hindi language is about two friends – 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 Premier, Sarvnik said, “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” 

Producer Koval Bhatia added, “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!”