The festival was founded by filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in 2012 to promote contemporary cinema, art and independent media practices in the Himalayan region.

[6] DIFF partnered with the Festival des 3 Continents’ Produire au Sud (PAS) to launch the first edition of Filmlab South Asia in Dharamshala in 2022.

They have included Kazuhiro Soda, Asif Kapadia, Adil Hussain, Varun Grover, Anurag Kashyap, Jennifer Fox, Manoj Bajpayee, Naseeruddin Shah, Konkona Sensharma and Pa. Ranjith among others.

[10] As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, DIFF initiated The Viewing Room in March 2020 using a platform provided by Shift72[11]— a selection of the festival's alumni films available to audiences around the world every two weeks until July 2020.

[12] Some of the films include 5 Broken Cameras, With You, Without You, Tripoli Cancelled, Court, Placebo, Ee Ma Yau, Miss Lovely, Nabarun, and The Dossier.