The festival’s centerpiece is Kushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla’s ‘An Insignificant Man’.
The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) announced the opening, centerpiece and closing night films for its 17th anniversary season. The event will be held from 30th April to 7th May at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, One Bowling Green, New York.
The oldest and most prestigious Indian film festival in the United States will open this year’s edition with Alankita Shrivastava’s film Lipstick Under My Burkha. The film recently made headlines for not getting a certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification for being “female-orientedâ€. The movie, which features Konkana Sen Sharma, Ratna Pathak, Aahana Kumara and Plabita Borthakur in lead roles, was premiered at the Tokyo and Mumbai Film Festivals; and won the Spirit of Asia Prize and the Oxfam Award for Best Film on Gender Equality.
The festival’s centerpiece is the New York premier of Kushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla’s critically acclaimed documentary An Insignificant Man, which narrates the life story of Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal.
In addition to the New York, North American and World Premiers of 44 short films, documentaries and feature films over a week-long period, NYIFF will also conduct some sidebar festival programs.
As a tribute to legendary actor Om Puri, NYIFF will screen one of his last films A Death in the Gunj directed by Konkana Sen Sharma on May 1st, Monday.
Actress Priyanka Chopra’s productions Ventilator and Sarvaan will be screened on Thursday May 4th and sibling film makers Deepa Mehta and Dilip Mehta will present their respective New York Premiers of Anatomy Of Violence and ‘Mostly Sunny’ on Saturday May 6th.
NYIFF will also host a workshop by National Award-Winning filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni on 5th and 6th May and also screen one minute cell phone films by NYU Tisch Cinema Studies students.
NYIFF will close its programming on 7th May with the North American premier of Milind Dhimade’s You Are MySunday. The uplifting, slice-of-life comedy about five close friends who struggles to find a place to play soccer in Mumbai every Sunday, will screen at Mason Hall on the Baruch College campus. The final screening will be preceded by a red carpet reception for media interviews, this year’s Award Ceremony and gala closing night party.
Screening tickets and individual gala benefit dinner tickets are available at www.iaac.us .
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