LOS ANGELES: The 2023 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles concluded on October 15th with Varun Grover’s directorial debut of ‘All India Rank’ as the closing night film, but not before the director performed a short stand-up comedy set as his own opening act. Chhaya Nene caught up with Grover and other filmmakers on the IFFLA pink to see how the festival went, how audiences responded to their films, and what they wished people knew about their work.
As the festival wrapped up the following films received awards:
THE GRAND JURY PRIZE FOR BEST FEATURE FILM AWARD
- AATTAM (THE PLAY) by Anand Ekarshi
FEATURE JURY HONORABLE MENTION
- RAPTURE by Dominic Sangma
THE GRAND JURY PRIZE FOR BEST SHORT FILM AWARD
- MEN IN BLUE by Sachin Dheeraj
SHORT FILM JURY HONORABLE MENTION
- PLACES I’VE CALLED MY OWN by Sushma Khadepaun
- ANU by Pulkit Arora
AUDIENCE AWARD FOR BEST FEATURE FILM
- THE GOLDEN THREAD by Nishtha Jain
AUDIENCE AWARD FOR BEST SHORT FILM
- TALL DARK AND HANDSOME by Sam Baron
Awards were decided by the following panel members:
Jury Members for the Feature Film Competition:
- Karan Soni (Actor, Deadpool, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, Miracle Workers)
- Bilal Qureshi (Journalist and Film Critic, NPR and Washington Post)
- Utkarshini Vashishtha (Screenwriter, Gangubai Kathiawadi, Sarbjt; Associate Director, India’s Got Talent)
Jury members for the Best Short Film Competition::
- Priya Arora (Journalist, The New York Times, HuffPost; Podcaster, Queering Desi)
- Geeta Malik (Writer and Director, India Sweets and Spices, Abbott Elementary)
- Katie Walsh (Film Critic, Los Angeles Times)