Kathmandu DocLab - Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival

Kathmandu Doc Lab 2025

The first Kathmandu Doc Lab took place from 24 to 28 May. Nine selected projects came to Kathmandu
for four-days of intensive workshops, masterclasses and mentoring by our renowned mentors.

Learn more about the projects, our mentors and the industry partners they are pitching to on June 10 below!

Projects

A Weaver Bird’s Nest

Alvina Joshi & Rahul Rabha | India

When his village is marked for demolition, an unemployed artist must protect both his ancestral home and his family, or lose the very connections that define who he is.

An Eventual Calamity of Time

Omkar Khandagale | India

Realizing all that is left of his great-grandfather are the tools of his caste trade – a pair of scissors, a comb and a mirror, a filmmaker sets out for his hometown hoping to make sense of his family and their inheritance.

Echoes Underneath

Sumair Shamsi | Pakistan

Riaz Masih, a Christian sanitation worker in Lahore, dreams of a better life for his children. But as he confronts caste stigma, religious discrimination, and daily danger in the sewers, he must choose between quiet survival and risking everything to break the cycle for the next generation.

Gard

Mahera Omar | Pakistan

A fisherwoman collects firewood from Karachi’s mangrove forests. A melancholy dog sits on a sea wall, just being. In the skies, a toxic haze hovers, shortening lifespans.

Mannu Mon

Gia Singh Arora | India

In Mumbai, Suruj a non-binary drag queen from Assam mothers a chosen queer family. As drag fades, and her father’s voice returns, she questions if kinship alone can anchor belonging.

Sroter Gaan

Ahsabul Yamin | Bangladesh

A young mother who gave birth during a deadly flood, dreams of a safer future for her child but in a place where land disappears underwater every year, moving forward means leaving behind everything she’s ever known.

The Last Yak Herder

Sonam Yangzom | Bhutan

In the remote highlands of Bhutan, a teenage girl is torn between the allure of modern life and her grandmother’s desperate plea to preserve their dying tradition of yak herding.

Traces of Her

Bunu Dhungana | Nepal

Gaura Prasai attempts to reconnect with her friend Sita to revisit their 1971 armed rebellion against landlords in eastern Nepal and fight the political erasure of women’s participation.

Where It Rains

Nuruzzaman Khan | Bangladesh/Lithuania

A Bangladeshi man confronts the challenges of identity, fatherhood, and bureaucracy in Lithuania— a country ranked happiest for youth, yet haunted by one of Europe’s highest suicide rates with the reflection of Lithuanian friends and family.

Mentors

Anam Abbas

Anam Abbas is an award-winning filmmaker, director of “This Stained Dawn” (Sheffield, Yamagata, 2021) and producer behind “Showgirls of Pakistan” (IDFA, 2020) and “In Flames” (Cannes, TIFF, Busan, Sitges). Anam has served on the selection jury for Berlinale Talents Doc Station, Sheffield Meet Market. She is a founding member of the Documentary Association of Pakistan, programming the Chalta Phirta Film Festival, and runs intensive Doc Labs in Pakistan.

Arun Bhattarai

Arun Bhattarai is a Bhutanese documentary filmmaker known for acclaimed works like, “Agent of Happiness, “The Next Guardian”, and Mountain Man”. His latest, Agent of Happiness debuted at The Sundance Film Festival, where it was a grand jury prize nominee. His films have been awarded at major festivals and theatrically released around the world. Bhattarai specializes in intimate, culturally nuanced storytelling. His films have been supported by Sundance, Catapult and IDFA Bertha Fund.

Rintu Thomas

Rintu Thomas is an Academy Award-nominated, Peabody-winning Indian filmmaker whose body of work sits at the intersection of storytelling as an art and a dialogue. Her double Sundance-winning ‘Writing With Fire’ (2021) is India’s first Oscar-nominated feature documentary. Rintu is a recipient of the IDA Courage Under Fire Award, the President’s Medal in India and a co-founder of Black Ticket Films. Her critically acclaimed work is centered on creating powerful, socially engaged documentaries that amplify underrepresented voices.

Advisors

Jane Mote

As Consultant Editor at The Whickers fund, Jane Mote works with emerging documentary filmmakers who tell compelling stories about our world. She has guided filmmakers at numerous Asian forums including Docs by the Sea in Bali, MyDocs Malaysia, Dhaka DocLab and Docedge Kolktata . Her experience extends to documentary training programs at the British Film Institute in London and workshops in Africa, Iceland and the UK.

Nilotpal Majumdar

Nilotpal Majumdar has worn many hats in his journey through documentary filmmaking – from directing award-winning films to mentoring emerging talents across Asia. A graduate of FTII Pune, he founded DocEdge Kolkata and has served as Dean at Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute and headed the Manipur State Film and Television Institute. His work in nurturing new voices has taken him to numerous labs and workshops across South Asia, including DMZ Doc Funds, Dhaka DocLab, and Korean Pitch for IDFA.