An astounding two decades bringing independent cinema from Asia and Global South to the UK and beyond…
This week Day for Night is celebrating 20 years since it was founded by curator, writer and subtitler, Sonali Joshi. The company was established with the key aim of creating a space to champion diversity and underrepresented areas of cinema, with accessibility and diversity as its founding pillars and the very essence of Day for Night’s ethos. Marking its 20th anniversary, they release 100 Sunset by Tibetan-Canadian director Kunsang Kyirong in select UK cinemas from Friday 20 November. A striking new voice in diasporic cinema, the film received an Honorable Mention for the Best Canadian Discovery Award at Toronto International Film Festival 2025 where it had its world premiere.
Day for Night started on 9 November 2006 as a provider of subtitling services to filmmakers, producers, film festivals, cinemas, distributors, galleries and museums. From 2008, curatorial projects started to take shape with the launch of the Through an Exile Lens Project, beginning its long relationship with Asian cinema. Further projects included Nordic Film Festival (supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond), Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival (supported by Arts Council of England and Purin Pictures), “India at 70” and Japanese architecture and film project “Urban, Natural, Human” (both supported by BFI).
Day for Night moved into distribution in 2013 with the releases of Aditya Assarat‘s Hi-So and Dominga Sotomayor’s Thursday Till Sunday in the UK and Ireland. Day for Night has gone on to champion the work of filmmakers such as Anocha Suwichakornpong, Chaitanya Tamhane, July Jung, Koji Fukada, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, Pema Tseden and Shireen Seno, among many others. Day for Night has built many long-standing relationships with a variety of organisations in the UK and internationally across its different areas of activity, including Anti-Archive (Cambodia), Dharamshala International Film Festival (India), Edinburgh International Film Festival, M+ (Hong Kong), Open City Documentary Festival, Second Run and HOME.
Initially releasing around two to four films a year, Day for Night now has a catalogue of 40 films, and one that represents the work of 29 female filmmakers and 29 male filmmakers (with several anthology and co-directed films). Firmly rooted in a curatorial approach, the aim has always been to offer an alternative to traditional distribution, enabling a meticulously curated selection of films to find its audience beyond the international festival circuit. In partnership with its Tokyo based sister company, Not That Films, Day for Night is now extending its UK distribution activities to hosting screenings and curatorial projects in cinemas, galleries, museums and cultural institutions internationally.
Speaking on the occasion of Day for Night’s 20th anniversary, Founder, Sonali Joshi, said, “Supporting emerging, female, indigenous and diverse talent more broadly has always been at the heart of Day for Night’s philosophy, with a long-standing commitment to platforming some of the best and freshest talent within Asian cinema and cinema from the Global South. We’ve equally forged strong ongoing collaborations with various filmmakers, including Dominga Sotomayor, the late Pema Tseden and Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit. We have always sought to support bold and daring films that experiment in form as well as question the boundaries of cinema, contemplating the intersection between moving image, art, sound and music, whilst equally seeking to dismantle boundaries. We’re now looking ahead with great anticipation to our exciting line-up of films that we’re releasing in the UK and Ireland in the coming year as well as more international collaborative projects.”
To mark its 20 years, Day for Night is now embarking on an ambitious programme of screenings in collaboration with its many long-standing partners from over the years, as well as through some new collaborations, both in the UK and internationally. Plans are also afoot for three curated seasons over the next two years, a new UK wide Asian film club – Kino Asia, reshaping Aperture: Asia & Pacific Film Festival into an ongoing international travelling screening project, and starting an archive – a physical and digital repository for film and video as well as writing, images, posters and other texts based on Day for Night’s work over the last 20 years.
Alongside the release of of 100 Sunset, their upcoming slate for 2027 includes Linka Linka by Tibetan filmmaker Kangdrun (China 2025), Becoming by Kazakh filmmaker Zhannat Alhanova (Kazakhstan 2025), Becoming Human (Polen Ly, Cambodia 2025) and, Director’s Fortnight title, La Perra (Dominga Sotomayor, Chile 2026).