Sundance Winner Documentary AGAINST THE TIDE Wins The Top Awards At Two Prestigious Film Festivals On The Same Day

It's a double treat for Sarvnik Kaur's Sundance winner documentary Against The Tide which won two top awards at two prestigious film festivals, on the same day.

The film won the ‘Golden Gateway Award' at the 23rd Jio MAMI Mumbai International Film Festival and the ‘Best Documentary Film' at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2023.

The film has won ten awards including a special Jury prize in Vérité Filmmaking at Sundance Film Festival 2023, UN Perception Change Award at Visions du Réel 2023, Grand Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at Seattle IFF 2023, Sustainable Future Award at Sydney IFF 2023 and Best Feature Award at Ice Docs 2023. It recently won Best Documentary at International South Asian Film Festival Canada.

Against The Tide was the only documentary selected among 14 features in the South Asia Competition section.

The 97 minute film in Koli, Marathi, Hindi language is about Two friends, both indigenous Koli Fishermen in Mumbai, who are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.

Excited about the awards, National Award-winning filmmaker Sarvnik Kaur says, “Last night was something special for Against the Tide as we bagged 2 top awards at 2 prestigious festivals. ATT is awarded the best documentary at Asia Pacific Screen Awards and the Golden Gate at Jio MaMi. We are so honoured and humbled to receive these awards. It's not just a recognition of the craft and years of toil by my crew but also a recognition of the heroic efforts by the Kolis to live in this apathetic city with dignity and pride. This award is not mine; it belongs to Ganesh, Rakesh and all the other Kolis who persevere with their ancestral value systems and give us the space to call this city our homes.

The producer Koval Bhatia adds, “We are absolutely thrilled to receive the recognition from these incredible institutions: both MAMI and APSA play such an important role in platforming cinema. We hope the tide continues to turn for Indian non fiction and independent cinema, and that these awards help our film reach more audiences. We're excited for where this journey takes us next”

The film has been edited by Atanas Georgiev (Honeyland) and Blagoja Nedelkovki and Moinak Bose is the sound designer. Igor Vasilev has done the music. 

The film produced by Snooker Club Films and A Little Anarky Films in co-production with Les Films de l'Œil Sauvage with the support of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Doc Society Climate Story Fund, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Catapult Film Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, The Sundance Institute, SFFILM, AlterCine Foundation, Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in collaboration with the CNC, Procirep Angoa.

Synopsis 

Mumbai fishermen Rakesh and Ganesh are inheritors of the great Koli knowledge system—a way to harvest the sea by following the moon and the tides. Rakesh has kept faith in the traditional fishing methods while Ganesh has moved away from them, embracing technology. Against the Tide is a tale of deep friendship and rising resentment between the two men, against the backdrop of an adoring sea, which is increasingly turning hostile because of climate change.

Director's Note 

I am often told that Against the Tide looks like ‘life itself' and it is not to my credit alone. This film was made possible because of the collaboration I found in Ganesh, Rakesh, their spouses, family members and the entire Koli community that gave me a chance to bear witness so together we could meditate on how the collective narrative of our times is formed of multitudes of singular narratives of trauma. To the backdrop of a dying sea and an indifferent metropolis; this film is an ode to the Kolis of Bombay and their very heroic act of living life with dignity, courage, love and forgiveness in the face of an all-pervasive adversity called climate change.

About Sarvnik Kaur

Sarvnik Kaur is a documentary filmmaker whose work takes a skeptical stance towards the ‘grand narratives' of modernism and ‘Scientific Certainties'. Made of moments that hide anxiety and conflict just beneath the surface of the normal and the mundane, her films speak of the predicament of being human in our times. Her latest feature documentary ‘Against the Tide' premiered at Sundance 2023 where she bagged the Special Jury Award for Verite Filmmaking. The film since then has received several awards including the Grand Jury at the Seattle International, the Best Documentary Award at IceDocs, the UN Perception Change Award at Visions-du-Reel, the Sustainability Award at Sydney International, The Warsaw Peace Award and also the Paznun City Freedom Award at Millenium Docs Against Gravity. Her first film ‘Soz – A Ballad of Maladies' was awarded the President of India's 64th National Award for best debut direction besides bagging the best film at IDSFFK 2017 and the Ram Bahadur Trophy for Best Film at the Film South Asia 2018. Her films have been part of several PHD thesis of film scholars at New York University, Harvard University, JawaharLal University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences etc. She is a HotDocs Accelerator Lab, Chicken & Eggs Eggcelerator lab and IDFA Academy fellow. Her films have been supported by Catapult Film Fund, Sundance Documentary Fund, San Francisco Film Fund, IDFA Bertha Fund etc. 

About KOVAL BHATIA

Koval Bhatia is a Filmmaker and producer based in India. She has been heading A Little Anarky Films for 12 years, during which time she has directed and produced commercials, documentaries and TV shows. She began her journey as an international producer with Against The Tide, which she has pitched at multiple markets and forums across the world. Her short documentary as director and producer titled She Run The World, premiered at The Smithsonian and at Hot Docs Canada. She is currently a Getting Real Fellow at the International Documentary Association (IDA) and a Hessenlab Talent.

Koval is a graduate from Eurodoc and a recipient of the Emerging Producer's Bursary from the World Congress for Science and Factual Producers, and her work has been supported by Sundance Documentary Fund, Hot Docs, Catapult Film Fund, Docs By The Sea, SFFILM, Al Jazeera, and DOKLeipzig. She is currently serving as Chair of Jury at the IDA Awards and as a mentor with In-Docs.