Nepali Film Shirjaraa Selected for Tokyo Gap-Financing Market as Nepal Marks 70 Years of Ties With Japan
Bikash Subedi's Shirjaraa: The Song of Grandmother is one of 24 projects chosen for the 2026 Tokyo Gap-Financing Market, running October 28–30 alongside the Tok
By Nepalese Events Australia Editorial
Published: 2026-09-30T10:00:00.000000Z
Category: Movies & Entertainment
Nepali cinema has secured one of its most significant international footholds yet: Bikash Subedi's upcoming feature Shirjaraa: The Song of Grandmother has been selected for the 2026 Tokyo Gap-Financing Market (TGFM), the project-market attached to the Tokyo International Film Festival. It is one of just 24 projects selected internationally, and the timing lands inside the year Japan and Nepal mark 70 years of diplomatic relations.
The project
Shirjaraa centres on a young woman who is an artificial-intelligence specialist returning to her ancestral home in Nepal — a premise that braids contemporary technology with the family-and-roots material at the heart of modern Nepali storytelling. The project is being produced by Kingdom Network and is reported to have already secured at least 60% of its budget, which is precisely the profile TGFM is designed for: films with most of their financing in place, seeking partners to close the remaining gap.
Why the selection matters more than a screening
This is not a film festival slot — it's a financing market. The distinction is the entire story. Festival selections show finished films to audiences; gap-financing markets put unfinished projects in front of investors, co-producers and sales agents. A Nepali project at TGFM means Nepali filmmaking is entering the room where international co-productions are actually assembled — the same mechanism behind the multi-country co-production structure that carried Elephants in the Fog to Cannes.
For the industry back home, the implication runs deeper than one film: if Shirjaraa closes its financing in Tokyo, it becomes a case study for how Nepali projects access international capital — a playbook the next wave of directors and producers can follow. Our TGFM explainer covers how these markets work.
Market details
Project: Shirjaraa: The Song of Grandmother
Director: Bikash Subedi
Producer: Kingdom Network
Event: Tokyo Gap-Financing Market 2026
Dates: October 28–30, 2026
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Selection: One of 24 international projects
The director and the moment
For Bikash Subedi, the selection is the career inflection point every director hopes a festival-market circuit can provide: proof that a Nepali story with a contemporary hook — an AI specialist confronting her grandmother's world — can stand on its merits in a competitive international slate. For Kingdom Network, it validates a production strategy aimed beyond the domestic box office. And for Nepal's film sector more broadly, October 28–30 in Tokyo is now a date to watch the way a Cannes screening is watched — not for applause, but for the announcements that follow.
The selection was first reported by Ekantipur and Online Khabar. For the wider context of Nepal's cinema ties with Japan this year — including the 70th-anniversary programme — follow our Japan news desk.
The anniversary-year timing adds a layer few financing markets can claim: Shirjaraa arrives in Tokyo inside the 70th-anniversary programme, which means the Nepali delegation walks into a market whose host country is, at the government level, actively celebrating the Nepal relationship. That won't close financing by itself — markets run on the project — but it does put the film's meetings inside a year when Japan's cultural and diplomatic attention on Nepal is at its peak in seven decades.
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