Full list of films announced; 78 films in 11 languages to be screened.
The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF), one of the biggest diaspora film festivals in the United States, has announced the full list of films that it will showcase in its 18th year edition.
The four-day event will be held at the Village East Cinemas in the Lower East Side of Manhattan from May 7 to 12.
According to an official press release, this year’s festival will feature four world premieres, two international premieres, six North American premieres, one US premiere and 11 New York premieres from four South Asian countries — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — as well as North America and the United Kingdom.
In all, 78 films in 11 different languages — English, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Bengali and Assamese — will be screened during the festival. Screening details are available of the official website of the festival.
NYIFF had earlier announced that it will pay tribute to Shashi Kapoor and Sridevi Kapoor, two legendary Indian actors who passed away recently.
This festival will open with the premiering of Ravi Jadhav’s Marathi film Nude and conclude with the biopic of Omar Saeed Sheikh, Omerta, directed by veteran director Hansal Mehta.
This year’s star attraction will be a Konkani film titled Juze, directed by Miransha Naik.
Shashi Kapoor-starrer Shakespeare Wallah and Heat and Dust — both directed by this year’s Academy Award-winning director James Ivory — will be screened as a tribute to the actor.
As a tribute to Sridevi, the festival will screen English Vinglish, which has the first woman superstar of Bollywood appearing as a determined housewife who travels to the United States and learns English.
The festival will also screen Autobiography of A Princess, starring New York author and chef Madhur Jaffrey, as part of its Merchant-Ivory Retrospective.
“NYIFF is known around the world for its top-notch, out-of-the-box programming, and this year is no different,” said founder Aroon Shivdasani. “The New York audience is sophisticated, well-traveled, educated and discerning; as such, our content reflects what we think will resonate with the cinephiles of this cosmopolitan city and will keep them coming back for more.”