From Ethnography to Sensory Cinema

How does a documentary move beyond observation to become an experience of its own? Drawing on his debut feature As Light as Air, which premiered at 2026 Locarno Film Festival, filmmaker and educator Umair Bilal reflects on a filmmaking process shaped by years of ethnographic research and immersion in the Sufi devotional traditions of Pakistan. Through excerpts from the film, he discusses how his encounters with these spaces gradually changed the way he imagined the film, and how the experience of immersion itself began to shape its cinematic form. He also reflects on how this process continues to inform his filmmaking and teaching. Speakers

• Umair Bilal, Filmmaker; Lecturer of Filmmaking Practice, NYUAD