South Asia Shorts Competition - Top 26
The Top 26 have been selected from this year's submissions to the South Asia Shorts Competition 2026.
Now the community, YOU , decide what moves forward.
Check out these amazing stories. Read the scripts and vote for the ones that speak to you, the ones you love, and most importantly, the ones you want to see made. The Top 26 go to Top 10 by June 7.
Logline: A fearless Indian journalist's hands begin to tremble uncontrollably while writing her new work on the state of governance. Through persistent advice, she’s led to a mysterious treatment centre which promises to heal her. But is she really healed?
Logline: Across decades, a queer Indian immigrant woman wrestles to reconcile with a God that quietly keeps breaking her heart.
Logline: In a world determined to silence her, a tenacious Afghan girl risks everything to keep her passion for music alive, defying cultural expectations and political turmoil with the haunting melodies of her ’Rubab’.
Logline: When a cinematographer’s tragic past mirrors the Himalayan folk tale he is filming, the story’s refusal to judge becomes his spiritual guide, leading him to confront his karmic guilt and seek a path to unconditional forgiveness.
Logline: A young chef struggling to modernize her heritage for a global stage discovers that the secret to her future success lies hidden within her grandmother’s traditional spice box.
Logline: Failing actress Maya is trapped in a motion capture suit on her 30th birthday, and after a demeaning acting job goes wrong, she must awkwardly navigate the city with her quarter-life glitch on public display.
Logline: During a communal riot, a grief-maddened father hunting for revenge takes shelter in an abandoned garage - where he finds himself trapped in silence with a stranger from the other side.
Logline: A 74-year-old man who spent thirty years perfecting the silence between them crosses his neighbor's wall at night with unsorted mangoes, not to reconcile, but because a single cough through old brick left him no other language.
Logline: Longing for the father he lost contact with, a British-Indian man hires a washed-up actor to play him during a one-hour car ride, hoping to finally say everything he never could.
Logline: When a Mumbai dabbawala arrives for his delivery and learns his 31-year customer has had a heart attack, he goes to the hospital — because he doesn't know where else to bring the food.
Logline: A celebrated cricket legend’s seemingly perfect life begins to unravel after his retirement, as unsettling encounters force him to question the reality of his achievements and confront the truth he has long avoided.
Logline: During his ex-boyfriend's wedding in 2017, a man withdraws to a temple well where the groom's mother finds him. In one quiet conversation, both reckon with grief and the impossible choices that erased their love.
Logline: A woman shaped by the quiet discipline of societal norms carries a forbidden childhood attraction she learned to fear; when she meets the boy again, buried desire unsettles the delicate boundaries that have long defined her womanhood.
Logline: When he wakes up from a coma to discover all communication has been outlawed, one teen finds safety in the caring arms of his grandma.
Logline: After their father’s sudden death, two siblings discover the painful truth of his silent sacrifice — a man who chose their future over his own life.
Logline: A young woman flies home with her sister in the cargo hold below, and across eight hours in an ambulance, discovers that grief is not the loss but the moment the world moves on without you.
Logline: An ordinary man has a surprising hobby, and it changes everything.
Logline: When a lonely father accidentally deletes the one voicemail that connects him to his daughter, he is forced to make the choice of choosing the memory of her and the girl herself.
Logline: A 7-year-old kid's journey to the local shopping mart to buy his hungry mother a luxurious, over-priced packet of 3-in-1 biscuit.
Logline: An isolated boy in rural Assam befriends a mysterious creature from a village pond, but when the being tries to become human, their fragile friendship turns tragic.
Logline: In the unforgiving heat of Dhaka, a transgender woman’s search for a restroom becomes a haunting journey through social exclusion, urban hypocrisy and the loss of human dignity.
Logline: A man spends twenty years preparing for life, only to find that when it finally arrives, time has already moved on without him
Logline: Two lovers are torn apart by their separate believes in an everchanging world.
Logline: Hours before boarding a one-way flight, a grieving son receives a mysterious call that forces him to confront the father he blames, the mother he lost, and the cycle of regret passed down through generations.
Logline: A late-night pickup draws a bus driver and his helper into a haunting encounter beyond their control.
Logline: Four months after his son's death, a Vietnamese fisherman takes his young grandson to sea for the first time , and discovers the dead do not always stay gone.
