Welcome Note

SRIDHAR RANGAYAN Founder Festival Director

There is Hope beyond the Rainbow! After the reading down of Sec 377 in 2018, the LGBTQ+ community have been rallying for equal rights, anti-discriminatory laws, equality for transgender persons and the recent hot topic marriage equality. KASHISH has been part of this movement for change from its inception, and this year as we bring to you KASHISH 2023 during June Pride Month, we look forward to highlighting issues and celebrating successes in forms and colours.

The theme of KASHISH 2023 is Be Fluid, Be You!, giving wings to the aspirations of the contemporary generation that is fluid in their thoughts, actions and sexualities; which is expressed through films, art and poetry that is universal in its appeal.

We are thrilled to present an amazing collection of 127 LGBTQIA+ films from 45 countries, with 27 films from India, many of them feature-length films! It reaffirms our position as India’s and South Asia’s biggest LGBTQ+ film festival. And to showcase all of them on the big screen at Liberty Cinema is a joy in itself.

We are happy to have the continued support of many of our regular partners, but also some new companies who are backing us this year’s festival. Without them and each one of our audience members support, this festival cannot happen at the scale we envision.

Come to Liberty Cinema and Alliance Française de Bombay and enjoy watching the films with your friends, families and allies, share the joy of meeting and networking and celebrate diversity with us. If you can’t make it to the physical on-ground festival, you can of course attend the online edition of the festival with many of the films from the on-ground edition, but also many more additional films.

However you may decide to join KASHISH, you should definitely be a part of it. Let’s paint the June Pride Month with Rainbow Colours!