Boudha's Lichhavi House is launching its first Licchavi Cinema Festival, running 11-15 September in Kathmandu, and the lineup punches well above its weight for a debut edition. Backed by Kathmandu Metropolitan City and the European Union, the five-day event pulls together films from Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Thailand, France, Germany, Japan and Russia.
The headline title is Abinash Bikram Shah's Elephants in the Fog, a directorial debut that took the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Alongside it sits a genuinely international spread: Mathieu Kassovitz's landmark La Haine, Wim Wenders' Perfect Days, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria. The programme also nods to cinema history with works by Andrei Tarkovsky, and spotlights South Asian voices like Payal Kapadia, Deepak Rauniyar and Bhutanese filmmaker Tashi Gyeltshen, plus festival patron Khyentse Norbu himself.
The premise is simple: Nepal's most celebrated films screen at Cannes and Berlin, but back home there are precious few chances to see serious cinema on a proper screen. Curator Abishek Budhathoki calls that gap the reason the festival exists. He's also sceptical of the usual arthouse-versus-commercial divide, arguing that in a country where film is still young, those labels describe markets more than movies. The festival's emblem, the mythical messenger Garuda, reflects the idea that cinema moves between realms, languages and perspectives.
For travellers, the timing is fortuitous. Mid-September is when the monsoon tapers off and the skies start clearing in Kathmandu, so pairing the festival with valley sightseeing, Boudha's stupa circuit and early trekking-season planning is entirely doable. If you're in town that week, it's a rare chance to catch Cannes-winning and classic world cinema in the city itself — and to see Nepali film culture building something new on its home turf.
