Building for the Art Deco Liberty Cinema in south Mumbai began in 1947, the year India won Independence from the British. It remains a symbol of freedom. On Wednesday evening, in a bar upstairs, women in salwar kameez and men in kurtas mingled, mopping brows in the Mumbai humidity between air kisses. A transgender filmmaker in a shiny black halterneck dress chatted about her latest short film, as a handful of Western diplomats in suits worked the crowd. It was the opening night party for the Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, the biggest gay film festival in India. Now in its fifth year, the festival, with around 1,700 attending, according to organizers, ran through Sunday and featured 154 films — including shorts and documentaries — from 31 countries at the Liberty Cinema as well as the nearby Alliance Française de Bombay. This year’s slogan: “Dare to Dream.”

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