Asian Cinema Fund

ACF Asian Cinema Fund

Asian Network of Documentary(AND) Fund

2007 Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund

LIST In Search of the Riyal

Category	DongSeo Asia Fund
Project	In Search of the Riyal
Director	Kesang TSETEN
Country	Nepal
Director's Profile	In 2006, Kesang TSETEN film "We Corner People" won the Best Nepali Documentary at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival and was selected as the inaugural film at the 2nd Bangalore International Film Festival. "On the Road with the Red God" won the Grand Prize at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival and the Special Mention at the Bilan Du Ethnographique, and was voted as the Best Documentary of the Decade by the Nepal Motion Picture Association in 2005. He earned a Masters degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a Bachelor’s degree from Amherst College in Asian Studies.

Synopsis: In 2004, twelve Napali immigrant workers were abducted and killed en route to Baghdad by an Islamic extremist group. This provoked a national outcry in Nepal and the first ever communal violence against the minority Muslim population. The 12 Nepalis were no different from their million compatriots who worked in the Gulf. They were simply trying to escape poverty and what was to be a 10-year war between the government forces and Maoist rebels.

Director's Note: The documentary will look at the story of the 12 Nepalis who died in Iraq, crisscrossed and against the larger Nepali immigrant story, the specific story illuminating the larger. The story look at the enormity of the journey undertaken, from feudal, rural circumstances, to work in the rich though distorted modern economies of the gulf that thrive on a pipeline of cheap labor from South Asia. The story that emerges will evoke the danger, the pain and the loss of innocence, as well as adventure and transformative and empowering aspects of the migration phenomenon.

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