21st Tasveer Film Festival & Market: Oct. 13th-18th, 2026

Tasveer is North America’s premier South Asian film gathering and the world’s first and only Oscar® qualifying South Asian film festival, headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

Held every October, the Tasveer Film Festival brings six days of bold cinema from across South Asia and its diaspora. South Asia encompasses Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tibet, and the communities that carry those stories worldwide.

The festival is where filmmakers meet their audience. Screenings, post-film Q&As that run long, workshops, and panels that fill the rooms between films. We believe cinema sparks ideas and unites communities, and that through storytelling we build a deeper understanding of one another.

Tasveer has built its reputation on finding filmmakers before the world does. Academy Award® nominee Shaunak Sen, acclaimed directors Mariam Ghani and Roya Sadat, Tibetan filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam, and documentary pioneer Anand Patwardhan, whose work often faces limited distribution for political reasons, have all found a stage here. Films funded through the Tasveer Film Fund premiere here too, arriving with an Oscar® qualifying launchpad beneath them.

This year’s submissions carried a shift worth noting. Women telling deeply personal stories in their own voices, animation arriving with real force, and a rise in sports and environmental storytelling, all of it favouring films that show rather than tell.

Check out this year’s schedule

2004: First Tasveer Film Festival, then called as the Independent South Asian Film Festival, was organized at Broadway Performance Hall

2011: The earliest prototype of the Tasveer mascot, the girl with a megaphone is found in this year festival’s poster. Check out our TSAFF Archive to see the 2011 poster.

2013: The Tasveer logo becomes official and visible on the 8th Seattle South Asian Film Festival. Check out the TSAFF 2013 poster.

2020: Tasveer collaborates with other South Asian film festivals from the US and Canada to launch a unified virtual film festival, Coalition of South Asian Film Festivals, COSAFF. This was one way of reaching out to our audience during the Pandemic.

2023: Tasveer attains Oscar-qualifying film festival status.