Ranging from short to feature films to documentaries, this year’s films highlighted the transformations and endurance of the family across the subcontinent and its diaspora, dealing with recurring themes such as women’s empowerment and the history of the subcontinent. With a focus on South Asian stories, language, and art, the SAFF was a much needed breath of fresh air in a city that often fails to recognize its diverse minority culture.

The festival opened with the screening of short film Mala, directed by Kaushik Roy. Set in modern day Kolkata, West Bengal, the story follows the adventures of an urban female protagonist torn between the prospects of an arranged marriage and her dream of being a filmmaker. The film follows an intertextual narrative that speaks largely to a Bollywood-loving audience with brief appearances by household names such as actors Deepika Padukone, Kalki Koechlin, and directors Rajkumar Hirani, Zoya Akhtar, among others. The words of wisdom offered by celebrities from the glamorous film industry help the protagonist find her own voice in a reality where women are expected to sacrifice their career for marriage. Albeit being restricted by poor acting, Mala delivers an inspirational message of empowerment.

With a focus on South Asian stories, language, and art, the SAFF was a much needed breath of fresh air in a city that often fails to recognize its diverse minority culture.

The highlight of the opening night was Pan Nalin’s Angry Indian Goddesses, a complex story about the lives of contemporary women in India. The all-female cast play characters from different folds of life: a rich housewife, a social justice activist, a corporate boss, a rural maid, an international artist, and more. This film garnered high acclaims at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and many have called it the first Hindi cinema that depicts female love and bonding.

There is a preconceived notion that women-centred films will fair poorly with South Asian movie audiences. Angry Indian Goddesses waited almost eight years for funding because producers thought a movie without any male characters would not be successful.

“The way women bond and the way they fight; the way friendships thrive among women – we haven’t seen that in Hindi cinema before,” said Pan Nalin, in a video recording that preceded the screening of his film. In addition to achieving commercial success, Angry Indian Goddesses challenges the idea that women cannot create their own narratives. It stands out in an industry that predominantly situates women as existing only in relation to men.

Nalin elaborated that he left space in the movie-making process for the actors to improvise their characters in order to achieve a degree of authenticity that could not have been possible from a male writer’s perspective. By giving women the agency to determine how they are represented, Nalin is able to portray their lived experiences without resorting to stereotypes. As a result, the film manages to unfold the identity of the New South Asian Woman, which is enclosed by no particular binary. It celebrates the diversity and multiplicity that come with being a modern woman in the South Asian context.

In addition to achieving commercial success, Angry Indian Goddesses challenges the idea that women cannot create their own narratives. It stands out in an industry that predominantly situates women as existing only in relation to men.

Through vivid narration, the film illustrates the violently oppressive reality that surrounds women not only in India but across the subcontinent. The characters in the movie encounter gendered harassment in various forms – in a board room, on their way to the bazaar, or even within the context of a happy relationship. The different ways that South Asian women choose to deal with these situations have become a source of solidarity as well as critique in news headlines and dinner table debates.

The first day of SAFF concluded with a panel discussion on the conditions of a women’s empowerment movement in South Asia and the ethical aspects of vigilantism as a form of protest against the justice system. The second day explored the different kinds of artistic and political spaces, imagined and physical, in South Asia. The short film, Spaces Between, documented Nikhil Chopra’s body art performance, La Perle Noir II: Aspinwall. In the performance, Chopra confines himself in a room on the banks of a river for fifty hours. “I am looking to create a persona that is confined to a space,” Chopra explains in the promotional trailer.

Spaces Between was followed by Mara Ahmed’s documentary, A Thin Wall, on the 1947 Partition of India, which separated the British-occupied land into India and Pakistan. Shot on both sides of the border, the film is a personal take on the Partition, as Ahmed is a descendant of a family torn apart by this colonial legacy. A Thin Wall and Spaces Between both confront the material and immaterial relationships people have with their surroundings.

The different ways that South Asian women choose to deal with these situations have become a source of solidarity as well as critique in news headlines and dinner table debates.

The later segment of the second day was woven through stories about language – or its absence – and celebrated the family bound by the South Asian codex, at home and abroad. The multitude of beautiful short films, such as Sanjog Heda’s Signal, Shamas Siddiqui’s Mia Kaal Aana, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Songs of Lahore, explored the diverse mediums through which ideology was produced, communicated, and protested in South Asia. The festival closed on Sunday with local director Garry Bietel’s Cricket & Parc-Ex: Une Histoire d’Amour and Kaushik Ganguli’s feature film Cinemawala.

An array of thought-provoking films brought to the forefront the experiences of South Asian people all over the globe. However, this year’s festival also saw an underrepresentation of geographically smaller countries. There was only one film from Bangladesh, and none from Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal. The SAFF also focused mostly on Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali while leaving out widely spoken languages such as Telegu, Marathi, and Tamil.

Despite this shortcoming, the festival tried its best to cater to the homesickness of the diaspora while serving the purpose of engaging in productive discourse within Montreal. It was an opportunity for South Asians in Montreal to experience on-screen what they cannot expect in a downtown Cineplex. The SAFF’s celebration of the diverse characters, concepts, stories, and more importantly, the language, music, and art were things that diasporic South Asians have been craving for a long time.

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Qatar’s unskilled labour force, mainly comprising individuals from India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, resides in labour camps and has to work long hours in extreme desert weather. These expatriate construction workers are bound to their Qatari sponsors under the kafala system, which is an unfair contract that does not allow workers to change jobs or take vacation days to go back home. Foreign workers are not permitted to work in Qatar without a local sponsor, or kafeel, who then holds a considerable amount of power over the worker. The regulations are restrictive to the extent that migrant workers cannot get a driver’s license, open bank accounts, or even rent a home without the permission of their sponsor. On top of that, a lot of these workers are heavily indebted to their recruitment agencies – many have to pay up to $3,000 in fees just to land a labour job. These workers, many of whom are illiterate, do not anticipate any of these situations since they cannot read the terms of the kafala system when they sign up for it. Trapped overseas, the workers are not given the choice to return home, as their passports are seized and kept by the employer upon arrival.

An investigation by The Guardian conducted in 2014 revealed that 964 workers from India, Nepal and Bangladesh had died while working and living in the Gulf state in 2012 and 2013. While this number is not solely linked to Qatar’s World Cup preparations, it is alarming enough to call for an investigation into the working conditions of a high-risk industry mostly supported by labour-intensive migrant workers preparing for the biggest consumer sport event of the world.

The issue of the work hours and living conditions of foreign workers in Qatar has been previously condemned multiple times, and in light of the recent scandal, the Gulf state appears unfazed by public pressure. Qatar previously rejected a recommendation from DLA Piper – a global law firm that provides human rights advice to multinational companies and governments – to investigate the deaths of construction workers and abolish the kafala system. The Qatari government has even denied that any migrant deaths have occurred in connection to the World Cup stadium. Despite the fact that Qatar has offered in the past to change its labour laws, history has shown that it takes scant effort toward progress.

Even FIFA sponsors Visa, Coca-Cola and Adidas, some of who have previously had their own issues with labour rights, have expressed concern about the poor working conditions involved in building World Cup venues in Qatar. FIFA statutes do not currently require the host country to provide legal security to construction workers or any other workers involved in the preparation of the World Cup. Despite being an organization whose objective is supposedly to promote “unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values,” FIFA does not have regulations in place that necessitate for host countries to impose ethical labour practices and standards of living.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of Qatar has recently established a Wage Protection System (WPS) that forces all employers to register with a bank to pay their employees or face penalties otherwise. While it goes without saying that ensuring timely payments to migrant workers and providing them with security is a matter of utmost urgency, the reform’s implementation date was pushed back from August 18 to November to allow companies more time to make the transition. Although a step in the right direction, this reform fails to address the discriminatory kafala system.
The 2022 World Cup has shed light on an alarming issue that plagues Qatar’s labour system and if FIFA will not take active measures to address the problems, then consumers and supporters of the event should. As fans of a sport which promotes unity and fairness, we have the responsibility to make conscious choices by not supporting organizations that perpetuate systems of oppression, social injustice, and corruption of the humanitarian spirit.

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The Montreal producer’s third album opens with a jumble of voices – a thousand indistinguishable strangers telling their stories – before easing into overlapping arpeggios. Slowly but surely, tracks start to gestate and individuate themselves through the musical primordial mist, developing throughout the rest of the album.

Standout tracks are “A Various Language (From the Same Hill),” which takes an eighties instrumental turn, and “Tethered in Dark,” an electro-waltz composed of bells and chimes.  For first-time CFCF listeners, the penultimate track “La Soufrière” is the most approachable, with a strong melodic line through the composition. A lot of the tracks consist of thematic arpeggios that echo soft background vocals. Much of the ambience of the eight-track album is generated by a constant buzz; sometimes with cicadas, sometimes with electronic feedback. This white noise of sorts weaves a meditative atmosphere that soothes the listener, creating the perfect sonic environment for reflection.

Radiance and Submission is an album for those who want to take time out of their day to relax. This Montreal producer explores experimental sound extremely well for those interested in avant-garde tunes.

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The project came together when Olive was searching for bandmates to play with to create a comfortable space for creativity. “We actually went up to a cottage in the Laurentians and spent six days up there without any phone or internet, just working on the album,” Olive told The Daily.

Olive’s musical style is influenced by the works of Bruce Cockburn, Ani DiFranco, Joni Mitchell, and John Mayer. His excellent string arrangements are the results of his formal training in classical music at McGill’s Schulich School of Music.

After finishing the project, Olive chose an unconventional mode of transportation to tour his album: biking. “I’ve always loved cycling and have done numerous cycling trips before where I’ve travelled across Eastern Europe, from Panama to Mexico City […] and even across Canada.” The decision to bike was not merely a preference for Olive, the artist wanted to increase awareness of sustainability issues by choosing an emissions-free mode of transportation.

In light of the upcoming federal elections, Olive wanted to align himself with the David Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot Movement. The Blue Dot Movement urges different levels of Canadian government to recognize clean water, clean air, and healthy food as basic rights for all Canadians.

“I am not much of a guy who likes movements normally,” explains Olive. ìI have a hard time finding a movement to fit into that I can agree with…but what I really liked with Blue Dot is that it’s really simple […] It’s a grassroots movement that gives people like you and [me] the power to put together a plan to go and see your local mayor and say, ‘hey this is what we want to do,’ […] I can’t see anything to argue about, [having this] in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Efforts to legislate the Blue Dot Movement’s goals have been met with resistance. When a municipal declaration came before the Kawartha Lakes City council last March, councillors seemed to be more preoccupied with potential liability issues post-implementation than the spirit of the motion.

Derek ended his cycling tour with a show at Monument National – Le Café in Montreal on September 4.

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