As the 2025 Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) approaches, the organizers have announced their Closing Night film — Songs of Forgotten Trees — directed by Anuparna Roy. The film, which won the Best Director Award in the Orizzonti section at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival and was also an official selection at the BFI London Film Festival, marks Roy’s self-funded debut feature. It explores Third World lives, marginal voices, and female agency with striking intimacy.
In addition to the closing night film, DIFF has also unveiled the remainder of its feature and documentary lineup, showcasing a diverse range of exceptional works.
The festival will take place from October 30 to November 2 at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamshala, inviting audiences to rediscover the world through cinema.
Closing Night Film
Songs of Forgotten Trees | India | Anuparna Roy | 87 mins | 2025
Thooya, a migrant and aspiring actress, survives the city by leveraging beauty and wit, occasionally trading intimacy for opportunity. When she sublets her sugar daddy’s upscale apartment to Swetha, a fellow migrant working in a corporate job, the two women – seemingly from different worlds – begin to share more than just a space. Amid the relentless pulse of Mumbai, they discover a silent empathy. But as personal histories, desires and wounds resurface, their delicate connection is tested. What follows is not a rupture, but a strange and tender unfolding – of selfhood, survival, and unexpected kinship.
Forastera | Spain, Italy, Sweden | Lucía Aleñar Iglesias | 97 mins | 2025
On a summer vacation at her grandparents’ Mallorca house, teenage Cata spends days playing tricks on her sister Eva, annoying her grandmother, conspiring with her grandfather, and flirting with boys. This lazy routine halts when she discovers her Grandma’s dead body. Time stops in this house already stuck in time. Unable to process grief, Cata turns to her grandmother’s belongings – objects and clothes suddenly meaningful and giving her purpose. She begins playing dress-up with her grandfather, who’s unable and unwilling to move on from this shocking loss. Cata takes on a new role at home, or rather, this new role takes over Cata.
Andrey Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer | Italy, Russia, Sweden | Andrey A. Tarkovsky | 97 mins | 2019
The brilliant director Andrey Tarkovsky, whose works are considered masterpieces of world cinema, left us with eight films and an ever growing interest in and desire to understand his work. The documentary recounts Tarkovsky’s life and work, letting the director tell the story himself, as he shares with us his memories, his view of art and his reflections on the destiny of the artist and the meaning of human existence.
The account is accompanied by never previously released recordings of poems by Arseny Tarkovsky, one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century and the director’s father, read by their author. Arseny’s poetry had always had an influence on Andrey’s movies, underlining the profound cultural and spiritual bond between father and son.
Nostalghia | Italy, Soviet Union | Andrey Tarkovsky | 125 mins | 1983
The Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov travels through Italy accompanied by his guide and translator as he researches the life of an 18th century Russian composer, Pavel Sosnovsky. There he meets Erland Josephson, a local pariah who declares that the world is coming to an end.
Lesbian Space Princess | Australia | Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs | 87 mins | 2024
A laugh-out-loud adventure through queer outer space, Lesbian Space Princess showcases South Australian writers/directors Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs. Daughter to the flamboyant lesbian Queens of Planet Clitopolis, introverted Princess Saira is devastated when her bounty-hunter girlfriend Kiki breaks up with her for being too needy.
After Kiki is kidnapped by forgotten incels of the future – ‘the Straight White Maliens’ – Saira must leave gay space to deliver their ransom: her royal labrys (the most powerful weapon known to lesbiankind). The problem? She doesn’t have it! With 24 hours to save Kiki, Saira embarks on an inter-gay-lactic journey including a problematic spaceship and friendship with gay-pop runaway Willow. An animated comedy like no other, Lesbian Space Princess is riotous, candy-coloured joy from start to finish.
By the Stream | South Korea | Hong Sang-soo | 111 min | 2024
A women’s university has a theatre festival. A lecturer named Jeonim asks her uncle to direct a skit put on by her department. Each day, Jeonim goes to a stream by the school to sketch and to grasp the patterns of the stream for her artworks. Her uncle, an actor/director who has not been able to work for several years, decides to direct the skit in memory of his days as a student. A somewhat scandalous incident occurs among the students acting in the skit, and Jeonim and her uncle end up getting involved. Meanwhile, the uncle becomes close to a textiles professor, the moon grows bigger in the sky each night, and every morning Jeonim continues to sketch by the stream.
Dying | Germany | Matthias Glasner | 180 mins | 2024
Dying follows the very individual members of the Lunies family, who haven’t been a family for a long time. Lissy is quietly happy about her demented husband Gerd slowly wasting away in a home. But her new freedom is short-lived: diabetes, cancer and kidney failure mean that she doesn’t have much time left either.
Son Tom, a conductor in his early 40s, is working on a composition called ‘Dying’, while at the same time being made the surrogate father of his ex-girlfriend’s child. And Tom’s sister Ellen starts an affair with the married Sebastian, with whom she shares a love for alcohol. As Death finally turns up on the doorstep, the estranged family members finally meet again.
Cycle Mahesh | India | Suhel Banerjee | 61 min | 2024
Four years ago, young construction worker Mahesh had cycled two thousand kilometres alone, to return home during the first Covid lockdown. Now he finds himself the subject of a film about his epic journey. But what is he getting out of the film shoot? Blending fact and fiction, this film-within-a-film retells migrant workers’ tales while examining its own gaze. As the shoot comes to a close and Mahesh returns to the maze-like site of his construction job, the portrait of an endearing young man trapped in his condition emerges. How will Mahesh escape this vicious cycle of disappointments?
Angammal | India | Vipin Radhakrishnan | 115 mins | 2024
In a remote, rustic mid-90s village in Tamil Nadu, a city-educated young man feels awkward because his mother is blouseless. This is how she has always dressed. But as he tries to find a solution before his prospective in-laws arrive, a simple problem spirals out of control.
We interviewed Vipin Radhakrishnan during MAMI 2024
Full Plate | India | Tannishtha Chatterjee | 109 min | 2025
After her husband is left crippled in a Holi accident, homemaker Amreen must step out to support her family and three children. Facing prejudice for her Muslim identity and veil, she struggles to find work until an open-minded couple hires her. Unfamiliar with their strict vegan lifestyle, Amreen navigates the challenges of survival, dignity, and balancing home with newfound responsibilities.
Loving Karma | India, UK | Johnny Burke and Andrew Hinton | 85 min | 2025
As a child, Lobsang Phuntsok struggled – until life in a Tibetan monastery gave him healing and purpose. Years later, after teaching as a monk in the US, he returned to his Himalayan homeland to create Jhamtse Gatsal, ‘The Garden of Love and Compassion’, a refuge for abandoned and neglected children carrying wounds like his own. Inspired by the Dalai Lama, the community aspires to transform pain into love. Loving Karma revisits the Emmy-winning documentary, Tashi and the Monk, 12 years on, following Lobsang, Tashi, and new arrivals as they search for hope and healing together.
Letters from Wolf Street | Poland, Germany| Arjun Talwar | 97 min | 2025
A street in downtown Warsaw transforms into a kaleidoscopic portrait of Polish society. Behind the camera is an Indian immigrant, who seeks to overcome the boundaries between himself and an anxiety-ridden country.
In Hell with Ivo | Bulgaria, USA| Kristina Nikolova | 78 min | 2025
Bulgarian queer artist Ivo Dimchev captivates audiences worldwide with his electrifying art shows, which blend singing and songwriting, theatre, dance, and visual art. Despite being HIV-positive, Ivo responds to the Covid lockdowns by performing a series of no less than 400 free, intimate concerts in people’s homes.
But for an artist who challenges norms surrounding sexuality, identity, and power, Bulgaria is too conservative. Ivo leaves in search of artistic fulfilment in New York, where his raw physicality takes even experimental theatre audiences out of their comfort zones. In a world that resists his radical individuality, Ivo transforms personal vulnerability and collective hardship into impactful art and activism.
Sheep Barn | India | Bharat Singh Parihar | 134 min | 2024
A labourer visits his ancestral village in the Himalayan foothills to take his aged father with him to the city. But his father’s refusal to leave the village makes the labourer prolong his stay, which becomes gripped by the terror and drama of a lurking man-eating tiger.
Collective Dreams Stitched into December | India | Bappadittya Sarkar | 61 min | 2025
This intimate documentary unveils the hidden pulse of Jaipur, Rajasthan – a city often reduced to its grand forts and regal history. Set across a single December, the film shifts from the opulence of monarchy to the quiet resilience of everyday life, revealing stories in unassuming corners where labour, mundanity, and community thrive unseen. Stitching labour to lyricism and activism to ancestral lore, the film confronts the invisible forces that sustain a city in flux.
