The Asian World Film Festival is a film festival based in Los Angeles, California. In its first year it ran from October 26 to November 2, 2015, and will continue for 5 years. The Festival is an initiative by Kyrgyz public figure and filmmaker, Sadyk Sher-Niyaz. The 2016 festival dates are 24 October – 1 November 2016.
Founding
Sher-Niyaz founded the Festival in late 2014, after his own experience in running a campaign for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards. Sher-Niyaz was the director of the Kyrgyz submission, Kurmanjan Datka: Queen of the Mountains, which according to the Hollywood Reporter was predicted one of the top 15 contenders.
Sher-Niyaz told TheWrap that he created the Festival to help other Asian filmmakers in their Oscar campaigns. ″I created the Asian World Film Festival to fill a void that I noticed was missing in America. There is a wealth of underrated filmmakers from our region that deserve recognition and this festival was designed to champion and promote them,″ festival chairman and creator Sadyk Sher-Niyaz said.