Sundar Prize Film Festival launches in Surrey

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The international awards competition, Sundar Prize Film Festival, marked its first event with screenings and panel discussions on June 15 and 16 at Surrey City Hall.

The festival, which focuses on themes such as human rights, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and immigrants and refugees, handed out nine awards and more than $17,000 in cash prizes.

The Sundar Prize Film Festival is an initiative of Sher Vancouver, a charity for queer South Asians and allies.

“People of all ages were coming up to me and saying, ‘Alex, this is such a wonderful celebration of people of colour, of women, of minorities, and it makes sense for it to happen in Surrey,’” said Alex Sangha, co-founder of the Sundar Prize Film Festival and Sher Vancouver.

“It really just shows how Surrey is maturing as a city and that our heart, our intentions were in the right place …. We’re making this festival because we care about the community, because we want to provide opportunities and build capacity for artists and filmmakers.”

Director of the short film Cash Cows, Shubham Chhabra, was among the celebrated filmmakers, winning the “KDocsFF Best Emerging Filmmaker Award” and its accompanying $1,000 cash prize and four-month residency starting July 1 at the KDocsFF Social Justice Lab inside the Cedar building at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Surrey campus.

The award is a partnership between KPU’s social justice documentary film festival, KDocsFF, and Sher Vancouver.

“I was honestly honoured to be featured amongst so many other really amazing films, I was blown away just by watching them,” Chhabra said.

His short film blends comedy and drama to highlight the employment exploitation international students face while trying to gain permanent residency (PR) in Canada. The film depicts a South Asian employer in Surrey who uses loopholes in the immigration system to take advantage of a South Asian international student facing expensive immigration fees and living expenses. 

The story was inspired by both his and his friends’ experiences.

“I personally was lucky that I only had [one bad] boss .… But my closest friends, every turn they [took], they’d face someone who was ready to take advantage of them,” Chhabra said. 

“Unfortunately [it’s] so common, … I mean, even at the festival, so many people came up to me, like, ‘Hey, that’s happening to my parents right now.’”

Chhabra said employers, like the one depicted in Cash Cows, are often second generation or have been in Canada for decades. In many cases, they have spent years learning the nuances of how to take advantage of someone within their own culture when they find themselves in positions of power. 

“Some notes I got were like, ‘Oh, it’s bad to show that brown people are doing something wrong to these [other] brown people.’ But I think as a filmmaker, I just want to show the reality and not be judgmental about it,” he said.

“If I augment it and force somebody that’s not brown exploiting them, then I’m helping create a bias .… I’m just showing what’s happening, that’s for you to decide.”

Chhabra is using his filmmaker residency to make a documentary version of Cash Cows, available on TELUS Optik TV in spring of next year. The documentary will be a parallel story that follows a Canadian border services officer, and will be in the same dramedy style as Cash Cows. He is also looking for international students to share their experiences for the film, which they can do by messaging @honeywagonmedia on Instagram.

Producer of Cash Cows, Kaileigh Coles, also directed a TELUS Storyhive funded docuseries earlier this year titled Through My Eyes: An Artist’s Re-Creation, which will be available later this year on TELUS Optik TV. The series follows local artist Maureen Coles, who is legally blind, as she re-creates her artist voice to adapt to her changing vision. Kaileigh and Shubham plan to recut the series into a feature length documentary this summer, and are looking forward to feedback from the KPU cohort. 

Chhabra was among about 15 filmmakers who applied for the residency, and Cash Cows stood out from the start, said Greg Chan, KPU English instructor and founder and director of the KDocsFF Emerging Filmmaker Residency program in partnership with the Sundar Prize Film Festival.

“I think I’ve seen it at least 10 times. It’s a film that you’re still thinking about afterwards. It’s a film that catches you off guard,” said Chan, who was also a shortlist juror for the Sundar Prize Film Festival.

“I was caught off guard because it’s a serious topic about the exploitation of immigrants in Canada, specifically in Surrey, who are in search of PR. It’s a topic that’s very close to the heart of KPU. It’s something that we’re talking about, and a lot of our students and faculty are living through.”

The residency at KPU will entail Chhabra facilitating a series of small workshops and screening rough cuts of his two documentaries in progress to the KPU and Surrey community for feedback. He will also have access to consultancies, including producer Sean Farnel who worked on the Academy Award-nominated documentary To Kill a Tiger. Farnel will mentor Chhabra about film distribution, marketing, and how to get into the film festival circuits.

His other confirmed consultancies are meeting with upper-level KPU English student Ian Frayne for acting feedback, as well as music instructor Gordon Cobb for help with sound design and entertainment arts instructor Diego Hernandez De la Rocha for animation, Chan said.

Chhabra said his gravitation towards stories of resilience within the human experience came naturally, and made for a good fit with KDocsFF and their focus on social justice films. He is grateful to have opportunities like these and to be able to use a platform like the Sundar Prize Film Festival to showcase his work. 

The first day of the festival began with speeches, including from Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke and MLA for Surrey-Panorama Jinny Sims.

“Sundar Prize Film Festival is absolutely without a doubt a testament to … resilience. By providing a space for marginalized communities to tell their stories, … you are helping to break down barriers and promote greater understanding and empathy,” Locke said during her speech. 

Directors Luke and Rufus Dye-Montefiore won “Best Animation Film” for their short film Unstoppable Beat, which follows a Haitian man navigating immigration to Brazil for a better life and finding community in an unlikely place. 

The “Best BC Film” award was presented to director Dalj Brar for his feature-length film Dil Rakh: Gloves of Kin. The film follows Dakota, a South Asian boxing prospect, who lost his mother to suicide while his father was in prison. Dakota is trying to escape a cycle of crime in his small town in Washington state while navigating a complicated reconnection with his father, who was recently released from prison after 20 years. 

Following the two screenings, cast members and producers of Dil Rakh: Gloves of Kin, including Brar who also played Dakota’s father, took part in the panel discussion “Building Empathy Through Film: Fostering Understanding and Connection.” Panelists shared their experiences making the film and the threads of empathy woven throughout the story. 

After the panel, Chan presented Chhabra with the residency prize, and Cash Cows was screened.

Director Jason Loftus won “Rogers Group of Funds Best Canadian Documentary” for his feature-length film Eternal Spring, which combines artists’ animation with live-action filming. The documentary tells the story of resilience in the face of religious persecution in China during the early 2000s. 

Film subject of Eternal Spring, Zhang Zhongyu, participated in the panel discussion “Empowerment through Art: The Resilience of Creative Expression” with Loftus, Chhabra, and Cash Cows producer Kaileigh Coles.

During the panel, which was moderated by Greg Chan, Zhongyu discussed what it was like being the subject of a documentary, while Chhabra and Coles talked about the making of their respective films, what they represent, and what they hoped to achieve from their projects.

Zhongyu said watching Eternal Spring was emotional, having known many of the other film subjects personally and the torture they went through while imprisoned, which was even worse than what was shown in the film. 

Coles was asked during the question-and-answer portion of the panel about her experience as a woman in the film industry. 

“I don’t see myself as a female filmmaker, I just see myself as a filmmaker,” Coles said during the panel. “And I think that’s really important for any minority to keep in mind, as it doesn’t really matter what your background is .… If you’re a filmmaker, if you’re a writer, director, that’s what you are, period.”

The final day of the festival featured screenings for the remaining five award-winning films, beginning with Iranian Canadian director Amir Zargara’s A Good Day Will Come, which won “Best Short Film.” Set in Iran amid turmoil, the film follows Arash, a professional wrestler, who is faced with wanting to win gold medals but also addressing the injustices in his country. 

Director Mochi Lin’s American short film Swallow Flying to the South, which won “Best International Documentary,” was screened next. Set in 1976 Beijing under the leadership of chairman Mao Zedong, the film follows 5-year-old Swallow after she was sent to a public boarding preschool.

The “Best Environmental Film” award went to director Alexi Liotti’s Rematriation. The film documents Indigenous leaders and community advocates speaking out against the logging of B.C.’s old-growth forests. Grandma Losah and Rainbow Eyes, who were among the Indigenous advocates featured in the film, drummed and sang in the theatre before the film was screened.

Rematriation featured interviews with clearcutting experts in B.C. and footage from the frontline activists who were blockading the roads to the Fairy Creek watershed in southern Vancouver Island. The blockade, which lasted from 2020 to 2021, aimed to prevent the logging of old-growth trees and was the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, with more than 1,100 people arrested over the course of eight months.

Zargara, Liotti, Grandma Losah, and Rainbow Eyes then participated in a panel called “Hope in Times of Crisis: Finding Resilience Amidst Adversity,” which was moderated by filmmaker and actress Rami Kahlon, who also starred in Dil Rakh: Gloves of Kin and was a shortlist juror for the festival.

“For me, the word ‘rematriation’ means reconnecting ourselves to our number one mother,” Grandma Losah said during the panel. “We all have one mother, and her name is Earth. And we need to get reconnected if we’re going to continue to live.”

Rainbow Eyes, who is also the deputy leader of the federal Green Party, noted that she was sentenced to 60 days in jail in April for her old-growth logging protests. She was released later that month pending her appeal to her sentence.

“When we find our community, we’re never alone,” Rainbow Eyes said. “Even in jail, whenever we’re alone in a cell, we never [feel] alone because we never lose our connection to the family that we have in the forest.”

The festival then screened director Radha Mehta’s American short film DOSH, which won “Best Student Film.” Meaning fault or flaw in Hindi, DOSH is about a hearing-impaired mother trying to get her husband, who has a mental health disorder, to seek help.

Director Gail Maurice’s Rosie, which won “Best Feature Film,” closed the festival. The film follows an Indigenous girl named Rosie in 1980s Montreal after she is orphaned following her mother’s death and forced to live with her French Canadian aunt Frédérique, who faces financial challenges and is reluctant to care for her.

The panel “Celebrating Human Resilience: How Do We Build Genuinely Strong Communities?” followed the two screenings and featured Mehta, Sangha, and Rosie producer Jamie Manning. Moderated by actor and filmmaker David C. Jones, the discussion touched on the inspiration behind Rosie and DOSH, the process in making the films, and the importance of community and being there for others.

The festival also had receptions with live music at the end of both nights, allowing filmmakers, audience members, and activists to network and make connections.

After Sher Vancouver produced two films — My Name Was January in 2018 and Emergence: Out of the Shadows in 2021 — and shared them at international festivals and community screenings, Sangha said starting a film festival was a “natural extension” of this work. As a social worker, he initially pitched a social work film festival before realizing he was one of the few social workers doing film in the community.

He and Vinay Giridhar, co-founder of the Sundar Prize Film Festival, then decided to expand the festival to focus on themes including social justice, social change, and social activism.

The festival saw a total of 228 film submissions, said Sidartha Murjani, executive director of the festival. About half of the 27 finalist films were directed by women, and 64 per cent were made by BIPOC artists. Six of the nine award winners were Canadian filmmakers.

The process of judging the films included a shortlist jury rating the submissions out of 10. Then, the films rated nine and above were watched by the finalist jury, which included Sangha, Giridhar, and Murjani.

“We had environmental films, Indigenous films, queer films, films on anti-racism, South Asian films,” Sangha said. 

“We had films that really give voice to those who oftentimes don’t have a platform or visibility at a lot of festivals. We really wanted to uplift those stories that really need to be heard.”