Licchavi Cinema Festival’s inaugural edition in Kathmandu, Nepal, from 11 to 15 September 2026, is like most film festivals: an attempt to revitalise the film-viewing and film-making culture of its place.
It comes at a charged time — when Nepal is emerging from the groundswell of Gen Z protests of last year that upended political power and the devastating floods of this past month. The festival will continue per schedule, even as Licchavi House, which is presenting the festival, has been busy with rescue efforts and fundraising.
“People in Nepal used to go to theatres only when they had the time, mostly on weekends, but they didn’t really think about what they were watching,” festival curator and film critic Abishek Budhathoki tells THR India.
“But post-pandemic, with increased marketing and awareness, there has been a new culture of watching films — mostly commercial films.”
In fact, the top seven highest-grossing domestic films in Nepal came out in the past five years. Indian cinema, too, is watched enthusiastically — from Saiyaara and Dhurandhar to Pushpa and KGF. It is in this changed and charged landscape that Licchavi Cinema Festival situates itself.
Licchavi joins other film festivals that dot the Kathmandu cultural calendar— there is Film Southasia, a biennial festival held since 1997, and Kathmandu International Film Festival, held since 2000.
Made possible with the support of Kathmandu Metropolitan City and the European Union, this festival is presented by Licchavi House, the arts and cultural centre founded by the Tibetan Lama, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, also known as the filmmaker Khyentse Norbu. Norbu is best known for directing The Cup (1999), Bhutan’s first-ever submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, which will be the closing film of this festival.
The curation also includes Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants in the Fog, which premiered at Cannes this year, bagging the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize — the first Nepali film to receive an award at the festival. Other Nepali and Bhutanese films like Tashi Gyeltshen’s The Red Phallus and Deepak Rauniyar’s White Sun will also be showing.
The curation also pulls in films from India (Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light), Pakistan (Seemab Gul’s Ghost School), Thailand (Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria), France (Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine), Germany, Japan (Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days), and Russia (Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker).
“A central aim of the programme is to give Kathmandu audiences access to films that have had limited, and in several cases no previous, theatrical releases in Nepal. In this sense, the festival is not only presenting a selection of films but also creating new encounters between Nepali audiences and significant works of international cinema,” the press release notes.
Building this into a regular bi-annual festival is on the cards. Budhathoki also notes, “Nepal doesn’t have a film market.”
The hope, then, for further editions would be to include a film market, alongside an expanded programme, international partnerships, filmmaker residencies, and year-round activities creating that aforementioned coveted culture of enthusiastic film-making and film-viewing.