Launched in 2015 along with the
Toronto International Film Festival, the South Western International Film Festival (SWIFF) programmed a lineup of Canadian and international films in November each year, at the city's Imperial Theatre and Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery. The inaugural festival opened with a gala screening of
Into the Forest, a film by Sarnia native
Patricia Rozema. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, the 2020 festival was staged online. The 2020 festival included a retrospective program of the work of
Sami Khan, a filmmaker from Sarnia whose short documentary film
St. Louis Superman was an
Academy Award nominee for
Best Documentary (Short Subject) at the
92nd Academy Awards. The festival's longtime executive director was Ravi Srinivasan, He was also an associate programmer with the
Toronto International Film Festival, specializing in South Asian and Philippine films. ==References==