Global South Screen Festival set to catalyse and empower the global south screen economy.
For decades, the Global South has produced some of the world’s most powerful stories, stories of resilience, migration, family, identity, climate, faith, conflict, aspiration, humour, survival and transformation. These stories have travelled through cinema halls, television screens, documentaries, festivals, community screenings and, more recently, through streaming platforms, mobile phones, social media, gaming, animation and immersive formats. Yet, despite this extraordinary creative energy, the Global South still lacks enough platforms that bring its screen economy together into a connected ecosystem. That is the gap the Global South Screen Festival (GSSF) seeks to address.
GSSF is being envisioned not merely as another festival, but as a contemporary screen and industry platform for the Global South:- bringing together cinema, series, documentaries, shorts, streaming, mobile-first content, AVGC-XR, creator-led storytelling and emerging screen culture under one larger conversation. The idea is simple: Stories from the Global South, across every screen.
The Global South is not short of stories. Across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and island nations, creators are telling stories rooted in lived realities. These are not derivative stories. They are not secondary stories. They are stories born of young, complex, diverse, multilingual, culturally rich, and rapidly changing societies. In many ways, the future of global storytelling is already being shaped in the Global South.
A young filmmaker in India, a documentary maker in Brazil, a series writer in Nigeria, an animator in Indonesia, a mobile-first creator in Kenya, a gaming studio in the Philippines, or an immersive storyteller in South Africa may all be working in different formats. But they are part of the same larger shift.
The screen is no longer one screen.
It is the big screen of cinema.
The home screen of the television.
The personal screen of the phone.
The interactive screen of gaming.
The immersive screen of XR.
The global screen of streaming.
A screen festival for the Global South must therefore recognise this expanded reality.
Why not just a film festival?
Film festivals have played a significant role in building cultural visibility, critical recognition and artistic exchange. They remain important. But the way audiences now consume stories has changed dramatically.
Today, a creator may first be discovered on a mobile screen. A regional documentary may find an audience on streaming. A short-form story may travel across borders faster than a feature film. A game may introduce a culture to global audiences. An animated series may create intellectual property that travels across languages and continents.
This is why we the GSSF co-creators & partners in cosultation with Ministry, Government & Industry bodies, chose the word Screen deliberately.
It is not a rejection of cinema. It is an expansion of cinema’s legacy into the realities of today’s storytelling economy. A screen festival allows us to look at the entire value chain i.e. creators, producers, platforms, distributors, studios, investors, governments, tourism boards, technology companies and audiences and ask a more relevant question:How can the Global South collaborate better across every screen?
The Global South has talent.
It has locations. It has culture. It has music, mythology, literature, history and lived experience.
It has a massive young audience. It has growing digital adoption.
It has regional industries with strong identities.
What it often lacks is structured access to markets, co-production networks, distribution conversations, screen tourism opportunities, technology partnerships and global visibility. Too many creators from the Global South still work in silos or seek acceptance and validation in the current platforms dominated by USA, UK, Europe & Canada.
Too many Global South countries have rich screen cultures but limited cross-border discovery. Too many stories remain local not because they lack quality, but because they lack the right bridges.
Also this reflects the vision articulate by Honorable PM Narendra Modi at the WAVES 2025
GSSF is being built as one such bridge.
A bridge between countries.
A bridge between formats.
A bridge between creators and markets.
A bridge between culture and commerce.
A bridge between policy and industry.
A bridge between the Global South and the world.
India can play this role & is uniquely placed to host such a platform.
India has one of the world’s largest film industries, a deep television ecosystem, fast-growing streaming consumption, a vibrant creator economy, strong animation and VFX capabilities, a rapidly growing gaming sector and one of the largest digital audiences in the world. But beyond scale, India also understands plurality.
India hosted the inaugural WAVES in May 2025. The event in Mumbai, India was attended by ventures and professionals of the World Audio & Visual Entertainment industry.
India is not one market, one language or one storytelling tradition. It is many Indias within one India. That makes it naturally suited to understand the diversity of the Global South. A platform hosted in India can therefore become more than an event. It can become a meeting ground — where countries of the Global South exchange not only films, but ideas, formats, business models, talent, locations, technology and cultural imagination.
Why Udaipur
The inaugural edition of the Global South Screen Festival is being envisioned in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Udaipur offers more than beauty. It offers memory, hospitality, heritage, cinematic charm and global recall.
Udiapur is a city that has already lived on the screen — in Indian cinema, international productions and the imagination of travellers. A screen festival in Udaipur allows the Global South to gather in a setting that is intimate, cultural and cinematic. It gives the festival a strong sense of place. Where the Global South gathers by the lakes, for stories that travel. A festival, but also a platform
The long-term ambition of GSSF is not to create a one-time event. The aim is to build a platform in formation. This means screenings, yes. But also industry conversations, country showcases, co-production dialogues, screen tourism sessions, AVGC-XR forums, technology pavilions, climate storytelling, youth engagement, cultural evenings, brand partnerships and public participation.
The Global South needs more than applause. It needs access.
It needs spaces where creators can meet markets. Where countries can showcase their screen economies. Where platforms can discover new voices. Where governments can see screen culture as economic diplomacy. Where audiences can experience stories beyond the usual global pipelines.
The moment is now The world is looking for new stories.
Audiences are more open to subtitles, regional voices, unfamiliar geographies and authentic cultural narratives than ever before. The Global South should not wait to be discovered only through platforms built elsewhere. It must build its own platforms, its own networks and its own spaces of recognition. The
Global South Screen Festival is one step in that direction.
It is an invitation to creators, governments, embassies, platforms, brands, investors, studios, technologists and audiences to participate in a new conversation. A conversation where every screen matters. Where every story has a route to travel. Where the Global South is not just represented, but connected.
Stories from the Global South, across every screen. That is the vision and the journey has begun.
To know more or express interest in partnerships, country participation, screenings, industry forums or collaborations, visit: www.globalsouthscreenfestival.com
