Archive - London Indian Film Festival

#Gadhvi

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Gaurav Bakshi
Starring: Sanjay Mishra, Rasika Dugal, Akshay Oberoi
Run time: 109 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2018
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: FILM, POWER & POLITICS

A retired, nondescript widower Ram Nath Gadhvi inadvertently takes on the establishment and suddenly becomes a social media sensation. He begins to take on Gandhi’s pacifist principles, but is no ordinary Gandhian, believing he is the reincarnation of the Mahatma itself. In the process Gadhvi attracts more and more followers, but also enemies seeking to bring him down, including hired-gun, Omkar, who has been tasked with suppressing the swelling anger against the establishment by shattering Gadhvi’s delusion and crushing his core beliefs. Gaurav Bakshi’s debut feature is a sharp social and political satire that plays out like a thriller where the audience is left guessing about who Gadhvi really is and if he is actually Gandhi’s reincarnation.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

31st October | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Shivaji Lotan Patil
Starring: Soha Ali Khan, Vir Das.
Run time: 109 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2015
Language: Hindi /Punjabi with English subtitles | Country: India

A roller-coaster ride of a film based on real events. On 31st October 1984, the Prime Minister of India is assassinated by her Sikh security guards. Local politicians use this incident to spark public hatred towards the whole Sikh community. Devender Singh (Vir Das), and his loving family are suddenly trapped in their house as their city is ripped apart. Neighbours betray and turn on each other, death stalks the streets and the city burns, but through this anarchic chaos courage and and humanity makes a stand as Devender’s family and their trusted friends risk everything to make a bid to escape. Vir Das and Soha Ali Khan give intense performances in this must see drama.
Contains some scenes of violence.

72 Miles - Ek Pravas (72 Miles - A Journey)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Rajeev Patil
Starring: Smita Tambe, Chinmay Sant, Chinmay Kambli, Sharvani Solaskar, Isha Mane.
Run time: 96 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2013
Language: Marathi with English subtitles | Country: India

Ashok, a 13-year-old boy in 1970s India, is sent away to a borstal boarding school for disciplinary reasons cannot cope with the harsh rigours of the establishment and runs way. On the long 72 mile trip home, which he has to undertake on foot as his money is soon stolen, he falls in with Radhakka, a strong woman with her brood of children who are on a similar journey. The group face the wrath of nature, extreme hunger, prejudice and every step is an adventure where tragedy lurks around every corner. Ashok sees how Radhakka, an illiterate woman with not a penny to her name, maintains the most positive outlook towards life through the most difficult times which he witnesses with her. Directed by Rajeev Patil who made the multiple award-winning Jogwa, the film is an adaptation of Ashok Vhaktar’s novel which is considered a masterpiece of Marathi literature. The film is co-produced by Bollywood megastar Akshay Kumar.

A Decent Arrangement

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Sarovar Banka
Starring: habana Azmi, Adam Laupus, Diksha Basu.
Run time: 96 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2011
Language: English | Country: USA/INDIA

In this cross-cultural romance we meet American born copywriter Ashok Khosla, who unable to find love Stateside, travels to Chandigarh to seek his perfect Indian bride. Guided by his well intentioned but overbearing cousin Preeti (a scene stealing Shabana Azmi) he meets the prospective brides and their families but the young women he meets are more than he bargained for. A good match is however found with Amita, a feisty young woman struggling with traditional values, but at the same time Ashok bumps into Lori an adventurous American woman who is travelling through India. As Preeti moves to cement the deal with Amita’s family, Ashok secretly struggles to make up his mind.

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy
Starring: a rare survivor who falls in love and lives to tell the tale.
Run time: 40 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2015
Language: Punjabi with English subtitles | Country: Pakistan

PLAY TRAILER >     FILM WEBSITE >

DOUBLE BILL FROM DOUBLE OSCAR WINNING DIRECTOR SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY

Based in Karachi, her documentaries capture key social issues and great moments of contemporary Pakistani culture.

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness is an honest and at times disturbing documentary about one young woman’s journey. After narrowly surviving an attempted honour killing she must maintain the status quo in her village by making peace with her attempted murderers – her own family. Winner of the Best Short Documentary Oscar in 2016.

The Bagri Foundation supports documentary films as a powerful medium to raise social awareness.

Aaranya Kaandam (Anima and Persona)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Thiagarajan Kumararaja
Starring: Jackie Schroff, Sampath Raj, Ravi Krishna, Yasmin Ponnappa
Run time: 153 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2010
Language: Tamil with English subtitles | Country: India

Bollywood Hero Jackie Shroff makes his Tamil debut in this pulsating neo-noir that abounds with characters and a potent mix of blood, sex and drugs that would do Quentin Tarantino proud. Shroff plays an ageing don with performance issues who has to deal with an internal challenge to his throne and a smarter-than-he-looks subordinate who cuckolds him with his sultry moll. Throw in a cocaine shipment worth millions and a rooster fight competition and we get a crackling thriller that shows how Tamil cinema is leading the way in India’s independent film movement. Razor sharp dialogue, a hip soundtrack and moody cinematography ably complement the bravura action sequences. And, incredibly, all the happenings unfold in a single day. The film won India’s National Awards for Best First Film and Editing.

Aarekti Premer Golpo (Just Another Love Story)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2011

Director: Kaushik Ganguly
Starring: Rituparno Ghosh, Chapal Bhaduri, Indraneil Sengupta, Raima Sen
Run time: 104 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2010
Language: Bengali | Country: India

Acclaimed Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh switches sides of the camera to act in Kaushik Ganguly’s film, which un-ashamedly shakes the foundations of contemporary Indian sexuality.

Abhiroop (Ghosh) is an openly gay filmmaker from Delhi intrigued by the story of 70 plus Bengali performer Chapal Bhaduri, famous for playing roles as a woman. Abhiroop lures him with money to reveal his tragic true-life story. As film shooting starts, we are taken on an extraordinary journey between past and present, where transgender Bhadhuri’s tortured love for a bisexual man is echoed by Abhiroop’s own affair with his handsome cameraman Basu.

As word gets out about the filmmaker’s disregard for social taboos, the media start to bite with homophobic vengeance, divided loyalties emerge and Basu must also decide between Abhiroop and his suffering wife.

Ganguly deftly plays out a rainbow of emotional nuances, while Ghosh gives a mesmerising and emotionally charged performance.

Abhijaan

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Parambrata Chattopadhyay
Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Jisshu Sengupta, Quashiq Mukherjee
Run time: 160 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2021
Language: Bengali with English Subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

A beautiful and tender biopic paying tribute to a legend of Indian cinema, Abhijaan explores the incredible life and work of Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee, from his first foray into film acting as the lead character Apu in Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar, to countless other classic roles he has portrayed across his long distinguished career. Soumitra Chatterjee tells his own story while accompanied by a magnificent who’s who of Bengali cinema. Don’t miss it!

Screening in liaison with Bengal Heritage Foundation.

Online Q&A with Parambrata Chattopadhyay and guests

Abosheshey (At the End of it All)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Aditi Roy
Starring: Roopa Ganguly, Ankur Khanna, Raima Sen
Run time: 118 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2011
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

Aditi Roy’s stunning debut feature is a gripping journey of a young man in search of his identity. Soumyo (Khanna), returns from San Francisco to Kolkata, the city of his birth at the behest of his estranged mother, the enigmatic and vivacious Suchismita (Ganguly). What should have been a quick journey turns into a voyage of self-discovery and an exploration of the great metropolis that is Kolkata, a living, breathing character in the film. In the ravishing Nandini (Sen), Suchismita’s protégé, Soumyo finds answers to his past and perhaps the future. The film is the Bengali debut of Khanna, one of India’s rising actors, who is an alumnus of acting legend Naseeruddin Shah’s theatre troupe. The film has won the NETPAC award for Best Asian Film. And Ganguly revealed a new string to her bow, singing Tagore standards, for which she won India’s National Award for Best Female Playback Singer.

Abyakto (Unsaid)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Arjunn Dutta
Starring: Arpita Chatterjee, Adil Hussain, Anubhav Kanjilal
Run time: 87 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2018
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: BENGAL TIGERS

Arjunn Dutta’s debut feature film is a touching story about the relationship between a mother and her son. Abyakto narrates the journey of Indra from childhood, through adolescence to adulthood through snippets from his past, as he is forced to revisit them when he returns to his hometown of Kolkota to take care of property matters a couple of years after his father’s death. The journey into Indra’s past reveal a strained and complex relationship with his mother that has gone on to shape him as a person in the present. Abyakto is a tender and poignant tale about love, regret, loneliness and the search for an identity.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Ahimsa: Gandhi The Power of the Powerless

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Ramesh Sharma

Run time: 108 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2020
Language: English with no subtitles | Country: India, South Africa

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

A compelling and powerful documentary exploring the roots and global impact of the Gandhian message of non-violence and peaceful resistance. Featuring interviews with renowned world class scholars, African American activists, like the late John Lewis, through to the Dalai Lama; it also shows rare archival footage of non-violent campaigns from India, USA, Poland and Hungary. Sharma’s film decodes the revolutionary power of non-violence and how it inspired movements of resistance across the world, which continue to affect us today.

Online Q&A with Ramesh Sharma and other special guests

Aise Hee (Just Like That)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Kislay
Starring: Mohini Sharma, Harish Khanna, Sadhna Singh
Run time: 113 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2019
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

A joyous and inspiring tale of an older woman challenging society’s narrow expectations of her. Mrs Sharma is the quiet ‘ideal’ wife of a government official living in a modest two story house in the small town of Allahabad. When her husband suddenly dies, she is expected to follow Indian custom and move in with her son and grandchildren, but she has other plans. Mrs Sharma wants, at long last, to explore her life and try new experiences, but this soon starts the neighbours gossiping, resulting in family tensions that soon threaten to curtail her new found freedoms.

Online Q&A with Kislay

Amar Colony

LIFF Festival Screening: 2023

Director: Siddharth Chauhan
Starring: Nimisha Nair, Sangeeta Agrawal, Usha Chauhan, Ayush Shrivastava, Deepak Sharma, Rohit Agrawal, Yash Thakur & Sreejith Vijay
Run time: 76 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2022
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Set in a dilapidated apartment block in a small hill town in the lower Himalayas, Amar Colony explores the intersecting lives of six tenants whose mundane existence unravels as they lose sight of their roles in society and give in to sexual desire. However, the emotional cost of their actions may prove too much. Siddharth Chauhan’s feature debut, which premiered at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, is a striking and hypnotic drama that grapples with the conflict between community and the individual.

Americanish

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Iman Zawahry
Starring: Aizzah Fatima, Shenaz Treasury, LilleteDubey
Run time: 91 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2021
Language: English | Country: USA

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

Set in Jackson Heights NY, a heartwarming comedy about a first generation immigrant Pakistani mom (Lilette Dubey), is still recovering from her husband dumping her and the girls years ago. She is now conflicted by the tradition of getting her grown daughters, Maryam and Sam, hitched to suitable Pakistani boys. None too impressed by the young men who come to dinner at mom’s, they decide to take matters into their own hands.

Q&A with Iman Zawahry and guests

An American in Madras | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: Karan Bali
Starring: Kamal Haasan, Radha Viswanathan, K. Hariharan.
Run time: 80 mins | Certificate: U |
Language: English, Tamil, Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

This fascinating and fast-paced documentary traces the journey of American-born filmmaker Ellis R. Dungan who arrived in India in 1935 intending to stay for 6 months but ended up staying for 15 years! During this period, he brought many technical innovations to the developing Tamil Film Industry of the 1930s and ’40s, and infused a sense of professionalism into its filmmaking. All this, without understanding a word of the language! Dungan directed the great Tamil superstar MGR’s first film, Sathi Leelavathi, as well as famed Carnatic vocalist MS Subbulakshmi’s most famous films, Sakuntalai and Meera. The film traces Dungan’s Indian connection right up to 1994, when on a trip to India, the Tamil Film Industry felicitated him in Chennai for his contribution to its development, a good 43 years after he had left India.

Radhika Apte Screen Talk

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

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The accomplished actress discusses her stunningly varied career.

Radhika Apte is that rarity – an Indian actress who is equally successful across the independent, commercial and international sectors. She starred in box office successes like Padman, Andhadhun and Kabali, shone in indies Parched, Phobia and Bombairiya and made a global mark with The Wedding Guest and The Ashram. In addition, she won the Jury Award at the Tribeca Film Festival for her bravura performance in Madly. She also has a cult following on Netflix, headlining the originals Ghoul, Lust Stories and Sacred Games. Equally at home in both London and Mumbai, Apte is a vivacious new-age artist whose acumen on the entertainment industry is sought after.

An Evening with Sharmila Tagore

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Starring: Sharmila Tagore
| Year: 2016

The luminous Sharmila Tagore’s precocious talent was discovered by the great Satyajit Ray and he cast her in the globally acclaimed The World of Apu (1959) and again in Devi (1960), Nayak: The Hero (1966), Days and Nights in the Forest (1970) and Company Limited (1971). Her glittering career in Hindi cinema began with Kashmir Ki Kali (1964). She won the Filmfare award for best actress for Aradhana (1970) and India’s national film award for best actress for Mausam (1975) and best supporting actress for In the Forest… Again (2003). Other memorable performances include Amar Prem (1972), Daag (1973), Namkeen (1982), Shubho Mahurat (2003) and Life Goes On (2009). She was on the Cannes jury in 2009 and in 2013 the Indian government accorded her the Padma Bhushan. Filmfare and the IIFA have also accorded her lifetime achievement honours.

Anima State | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: Hammad Khan
Starring: Uns Mufti, Malika Zafar, Osman Khalid Butt.
Run time: 80 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2013
Language: Urdu with English subtitles | Country: Pakistan

A man with a bandage mask across his face goes on a shooting spree across a Pakistani city, gunning down random people. He soon realises that his actions have no consequences and nobody appears to be interested in his murderous deeds, and so he decides to go on live television with a view to committing suicide on air. And that’s when there is a huge twist in the plot. The film is an unflinching and surreal look at contemporary Pakistan and will provoke and entertain in equal measure. Racy and unafraid of controversy from start to finish, the film is an exhilarating cinematic ride, dealing with persecution, paranoia and that blurry line between dreams and harsh reality. With this, his second feature after Slackistan, Hammad Khan firmly establishes himself as the boldest voice in British Pakistani cinema.

Anita & Me (2Oth Anniversary Screening)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Metin Hüseyin
Starring: Chandeep Uppal, Anna Brewster, Sanjeev Bhaskar
Run time: 92 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2002
Language: English | Country: UK

Strand: WOMEN MAKE MOVIES

We celebrate the 20th anniversary of the movie adaptation of Meera Syal’s seminal semi-autobiographical book. Meena Kumar lives in a small, predominantly white village in the Midlands, where she finds conflict between her heritage as Punjabi and the culture she was brought up in as British. Dealing with issues of race and identity with tact and understanding, this coming of age film is an important landmark in British Asian cinema.

Followed by a Q&A with the iconic writer and actor Meera Syal (TBC)

Anurag Kashyap Screen Talk

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

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FILMMAKER CONVERSATIONS

The Martin Scorsese of India. A rare chance to hear the experiences of India’s most famed cult director.

Anurag Kashyap is a unique talent and is India’s best-known filmmaker on the global festival circuit. His Netflix series Sacred Games was a global smash hit and is set for season 2.  He flits across genres, ranging from edgy, provocative fare like Dev. D, Ugly, Raman Raghav 2.0 to the two-part Godfather-like rural gangland epic Gangs Of Wasseypur, the political punch of Gulaal and Black Friday, and the unusual love stories Manmarziyaan and Mukkabaaz. Known for his outspoken nature, Kashyap pulls no punches on stage, and his deep insights on cinema are valued around the world.

Aparna Sen In Conversation

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

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Strand: IN CONVERSATION + UK PREMIERE: THE RAPIST

Join us for a rare talk by India’s greatest and longest standing woman writer director, known for her frank and honest views on women’s experience, filmmaking in Bengal and other matters. Aparna who first came to international attention as a child actor in the legendary director Satyajit Ray’s classic Teen Kanya (Three Girls) (1961), soon established herself as an established filmmaker in Bengal and then internationally with the acclaimed feature 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), a slew of acclaimed hits followed, making her one of the most famous names in Bengali cinema.

This discussion will be followed by the UK premiere of Sen’s powerful new film, The Rapist.

The Rapist
Dir. Aparna Sen
With: Konkona Sen Sharma, Arjun Rampal, Tanmay Dhania
132 mins | 2021 | India | Cert: 18
Hindi with English subtitles
UK PREMIERE

Aparna Sen’s Busan premiered drama tells of a survivor of rape of and the struggles she goes through to reconcile her life and future. Aparna Sen’s powerful drama world premiered at Busan. Naina (Konkona Sen Sharma), a professor in criminal psychology, is married to academic Aftab (Arjun Rampal). Their lives change one night when Naina is raped and her friend killed. She testifies and the rapist is sentenced. Naina deals with her trauma when she finds she is pregnant. Director Aparna Sen examines the psychology of violence and raises disturbing questions about gender, class and legal rights.

Introduction by Aparna Sen and Konkona Sen
Interview by Jane Crowther (Editor of Total Film and Vice Chair of the UK Film Critics’ Circle)

Apur Panchali (Apu's Song) | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: Kaushik Ganguly
Starring: Parambrata Chatterjee, Ardhendu Banerjee, Parno Mitra.
Run time: 97 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2013
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

One of the greatest child characters in cinema history is the little boy Apu in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road). Kaushik Ganguly’s heart-touching, jewel box of a film is inspired by the real-life actor Subir Banerjee, who played the young Apu. 58 years after Pather Panchali a film student goes in search of Subir. He carries news that a German film festival are keen to honour Subir, but the student discovers a reticent older man, whose life has ironically reflected the tragic character he played. With sparkling character performances and intercut with Ray’s Apu trilogy, this film is cineaste heaven.

Arishadvarga

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Arvind Kamath
Starring: Mahesh Bung, Sudha Belawadi, Avinash
Run time: 135 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2019
Language: Kannada with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

An aspiring actor doubling as an amateur gigolo gets caught up in a sticky situation after accepting a surprise gift from an anonymous client. Anish is desperately trying to make it as an actor but his dire financial situation pushes him to look for an escape, which he finds with an anonymous wealthy client. Called to her place one day for a rendezvous, he turns up only to be met with a surprise gift, ‘a murder’. He finds himself framed for a crime he didn’t commit with a witness who is convinced he is the culprit. Arishadvarga is a smart and tense neo-noir thriller that will have you guessing who did it till the very end.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Q&A with Director Arvind Kamath & Cast

Arjun & Alison

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Sidharth Sharma
Starring: Monique Squeri, Shiv Jhala, Oliver Squires, Kulvinder Ghir
Run time: 95 mins | Certificate: 18 |
Language: English | Country: UK/India

Set between Birmingham and London, Sidharth Sharma’s outstanding directorial debut is an unflinching look at a racially motivated murder and its aftermath. Arjun (Jhala), from India, and Alison (Squeri), from the United States, are students at a university in Birmingham whose lives are transformed forever when their black friend dies after a racist attack. The prime suspect is Gordon (Squires), the leader of the university’s controversial ‘English Society’. Besides dealing with the trauma of their friend’s death, Arjun and Alison also have to confront the ghosts of their own pasts. The film successfully pulls off the feats of taking a balanced look at race relations in contemporary Britain, the dorm lives of overseas students and the country’s thriving drug and gun subculture. Featuring an all-British cast and crew and an Indo-British director and finance, the film is a shining example of co-production between two countries linked forever by history and culture.

Arshinagar (Mirrorsville)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Aparna Sen
Starring: Dev, Rittika Sen, Waheeda Rehman, Jishu Sengupta.
Run time: 134 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2015
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

This breathtaking musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet ties in with the Bard’s 400th anniversary celebrations globally. Arshinagar is a fictitious slum that the warring Khan and Mitra clans want to acquire to redevelop as malls and apartments. While the Khan and Mitra goons continue to engage in violent battles to seize the slum by fair means or foul, Bishwananath Mitra’s son Ronojoy and Sabir Khan’s daughter Zulekha happen to meet and fall in love at first sight. Aware of the consequences if their families come to know of their relationship, Rono and Julie conduct their love affair in secret. India’s best-known female director Aparna Sen deliciously re-imagines Shakespeare as a taboo Hindu-Muslim love story. Entirely told in rhyming verse, the musical set pieces are energetic, inventive and blend Indian and Western choreography to rapturous effect. And it is always a pleasure to see the reclusive legend Waheeda Rahman make a rare on-screen appearance.

Article 15

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Anubhav Sinha
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Sayani Gupta, Isha Talwar, Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra
Run time: 120 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2019
Language: Hindi, English with English subtitles | Country: India

OPENING NIGHT GALA

We are delighted to open our 10th birthday celebrations with the World Premiere of Anubhav Sinha’s hard-hitting Article 15. India’s hottest male star Ayushmann Khurrana (Andhadhun, Badhai Ho) plays a police officer from a privileged urban, international, background, whose very first posting is to rural north India, where three teenage girls have gone missing. His honesty does not sit well with the existing, deeply entrenched corrupt system where, in 2019, a 1000-year-old practice where human beings are divided on the basis of caste continues. Beginning as a riveting police procedural that is a True Detective like deep-dive into the Indian bayou, Article 15 soon elevates to a gutsy exposé of a deeply flawed structure. The film’s title is a reference to an article of the Indian constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, race or sex.

Q&A with Director Anubhav Sinha, cast and crew

Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Aditya Vikram Sengupta
Starring: Ritwick Chakraborty, Basabdutta Chatterjee.
Run time: 84 mins | Certificate: U |
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

A cinematically sublime, must-see debut feature that evokes the legacies of Bengali masters like Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. Labour of Love is a seemingly simple tale set within the crumbling back lanes of modern Kolkata. A man carries out his solitary domestic routine in his small apartment. As the story transpires however we realise that there is another inhabitant of this same apartment. A woman also lives there, but through the hard toil of their lives the couple co-exist on opposing work shifts. Their love strongly binds them, but they are only truly together in the magical forests of their dreams. With its haunting score and soundscape Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s poetic film expands the story of two ordinary lives, caught by love and longing, into a magnificent sensory universe.

Ashutosh Gowariker in Conversation

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

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Join us to hear one of the finest Indian commercial directors of his generation reflect on his career so far. Known for his sweeping narratives, Ashutosh Gowariker directed Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan in the Oscar®- nominated Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001) and won the Audience Award at Locarno International Film Festival that year. Under his direction, star Shah Rukh Khan delivered one of the finest performances of his career in Gowariker’s Swades (2004), as did Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan in the Mughal-inspired epic Jodhaa Akbar (2008).

This talk will be BSL interpreted.

NFT1, BFI Southbank, Friday 23rd June, 6.30-8.00 pm

Asian Vibes London & Asian Vibes Bombay (Double Bill)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

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LIFF is thrilled to bring this rare double bill screening of Asian Vibes to the big screen, providing a definitive guide to the birth of two iconic music movements

Dir: Ashim Ahluwalia | 104 mins | 2002, 2004 | India, France | Cert: 12A | English

ASIAN VIBES LONDON
A FILM ON ASIAN DJ CULTURE FOR MCM FRANCE
An essential guide to the paradigm-shifting British Asian electronic music scene. From the rubble of race and class conflict in the 1980s emerges a new breed of British Asian artist – politically sensitive, culturally complex and musically radical. The film documents a whole range of personalities, ranging from Bhangra pioneer Kuljit Bhamra, TJ Rehmi, Cornershop, Asian Dub Foundation, FunDaMental and Apache Indian, to another generation of artists such as Shiva Sound System and Swami.

ASIAN VIBES BOMBAY
A FILM ON THE BIRTH OF MUMBAI ELECTRONIC MUSIC
In Mumbai what was old is made new again as an emerging DJ culture rewires Bollywood film music. This electrifying documentary explores new forms of sound emerging from the frenetic metropolis. From rickshaw drivers flexing their bass speakers to dissident hip-hop DJs merging turntables with tablas, Asian Vibes Bombay is a pop riot. Combining underground video aesthetics, archival Bollywood clips and an exploratory documentary approach. It celebrates the chaotic energy of contemporary India while reaching back to discover how it all began. Featuring Bappi Lahiri, Kersi Lord and others.

Autograph

LIFF Festival Screening: 2011

Director: Srijit Mukherji
Starring: Prasenjit Chatterjee, Nandana Sen, Indraneil Sengupta.
Run time: 132 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2010
Language: Bengali | Country: India

A hit film in Bengal, this is a tale of ambition and the corruptive nature of fame in the film industry. Shubhobroto (Sengupta) is a young writer/director with a vision to re-make the master filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s classic film Nayak. He approaches the reigning superstar Arun Chatterjee (played by real-life super-hero Prasenjit Chatterjee) with the proposal.

Much to his surprise the movie-god agrees to fund the film and be its lead. Shubhobroto celebrates with his live-in girlfriend and budding actress Srinandita (Sen) and he drafts her in to play the film’s female lead. As the production develops, the promise of fame makes Shubho increasingly arrogant as he slips into his own world.

Meanwhile Arun focuses his affections, on and off screen, on Srinandita and confides in her about his troubled past. The trio find themselves spiralling into a strange and yet poignant love triangle. With a talented ensemble cast and a compelling narrative, the film provides an insightful view into contemporary Kolkata society and a window into the inner workings of the Bengali film industry.

Avijatrik (The Wanderlust of Apu)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Subhrajit Mitra
Starring: Arjun Chakrabarty, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty, Sreelekha Mitra, Barun Chanda, Tanusree Shankar
Run time: 136 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2021
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

AUTUMN EDITION

Subhrajit Mitra revives Satyajit Ray’s enduring and endearing character of Apu after 60 years with a film that takes off from where The Apu Trilogy ended in 1959. After the death of his beloved wife, Apu is unable to settle and follows his wanderlust, setting out with his 6 year old son Kajol, to explore the world. They have many adventures along the way, but Apu is still trapped in a surreal space, as he imagines discourses with his lost wife, that presses on the real world and soon threatens to alter his path.

B.A. Pass

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Ajay Bahl
Starring: Shilpa Shukla, Shadab Kamal, Rajesh Sharma, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Geeta Sharma.
Run time: 100 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2012
Language: Hindi / Punjabi with English subtitles | Country: India

The Graduate meets film noir in this sizzling tale of seduction and betrayal. Circumstances force a small town, shy teenager, Mukesh, to move in with his aunt and her dull offspring in the neon-lit lanes of Delhi’s Paharganj. Called over to do some chores he is seduced by a gorgeous cougar whose husband is away. Mukesh and the woman’s relationship is forged in lust, lies and deceit, which leaves him spinning and entranced, that is until she farms him out to entertain her lady friends with dangerous consequences.

Babylon Sisters

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Gigi Roccati
Starring: Nav Ghotra, Rahul Dutta, Amber Dutta, Renato Carpentieri
Run time: 85 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2017
Language: Italian, Hindi with EST | Country: Italy

Set in the backstreets of Trieste, Italy, this feelgood, song-soaked film highlights the power of sisterhood. Young Indian immigrant Kamala and her parents have just moved into a tenement with other immigrant families and an old Italian teacher who accuses them of eating local cats. As an eviction notice looms, the drastically different women of each family fight together to save their home.

Badman

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Soumik Sen
Starring: Gulshan Grover, Chunky Pandey, Rishi Kapoor, Manisha Koirala, Farah Khan
Run time: 84 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2017
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles | Country: India

Screening with GULSHAN GROVER in attendance*

A mad, comic caper where the legendary villain of Bollywood, Gulshan Grover, decides to re-launch himself in the film industry, but this time as a hero! The not so young Grover enlists the help of his dysfunctional sons and begrudging Bollywood stars including Chunky Pandey and Farah Khan to help him achieve his transformation. Guided by his ‘friends’ our hero soon slips into increasingly hilarious and delusional situations as they plan his launch movie. Badman explores the dark yet funny side of Bollywood where almost anything is possible. It’s epic mockumentary style is a first for Indian cinema.

*The screening at Cineworld Wembley and Stratford Picturehouse will be followed by a Q&A with Gulshan Grover.

Gulshan Grover will NOT be present at the Cineworld Leicester Square screening.

BAFTA Masterclass: Successful Directing in India

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

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GURU LOUNGE

A chance to hear from BAFTA-nominated Anurag Kashyap (Sacred Games, Gangs of Wasseypur) and Richie Mehta (Delhi Crime, India in a Day) as they discuss their careers and the evolving landscape of cinema and television in India

Guru Lounges are open to all emerging talent working in film.

Limited capacity. Please book early to avoid disappointment.

Baganiya (Garden of Memories)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Humaira Bilkis

Run time: 56 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2018
Language: Bhojpuri, Bengali with English subtitles | Country: Bangladesh

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

Filmed over the course of several months in Bangladesh’s remote tea fields, Baganiya follows the incredible lives of three labourers. Padmoluv Bunarjee, in the last stages of his life, still remains nostalgic of his British Colonial masters. Young Chieftan Sojoy Yadav feels trapped by history, but continues his work in the tea fields and school drop out Chandan wants to elude this work and exploitation altogether. Through the lives of these three individuals from different generations, Humaira Bilkis weaves an elegant tale of labourers, whose lives are still impacted by the framework of colonial rules that still govern the tea industry.

Online screening in partnership with Bertha DocHouse.

Online Q&A with Humaira Bilkis

Streaming online on LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Baishey Srabon (Seventh August) | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Srijit Mukherji
Starring: Prasenjit Chatterjee, Raima Sen, Paramabrata Chatterjee, Goutam Ghose
Run time: 120 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2011
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

The teeming city of Kolkata, known for its food, music, poetry and cinema, is reeling from an unusual sensation – fear. A serial killer is on the loose, killing people in the dead of night seemingly randomly. But it’s clear that the killer is Bengali, because he or she leaves clues at the murder site in verse. The police are baffled and have no choice but to bring back their serial killer specialist (Prasenjit), a mealy-mouthed scotch-swilling, cheroot-chomping hedonist who was dismissed from the department years ago under a cloud. Making a stupendous comeback as an actor is the award-winning director Goutam Ghose who matches the film’s all-star cast note for note. The film’s frank use of Bengali swear words shocked a few, but delighted many when released in Bengal and it went on to become one of the biggest hits in history. It was also a critical darling and won some 25 Indian awards.

Barefoot to Goa | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: Praveen Morchhale
Starring: Purva Parag, Farrukh Jaffar, Saara Nahar.
Run time: 80 mins | Certificate: U |
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

A hit at festivals around India, Barefoot to Goa explores with great sensitivity the Indian middleclass dilemma of what to do with ageing parents and the intergenerational ties that powerfully bind families together. Diya and Prakhar live with their busy parents in bustling Mumbai. Their grandmother in rural Goa regularly sends her son and family countless letters asking them to visit, but never gets a reply, even though her grandchildren love her dearly. One day the kids discover that their mum has been hiding the un-opened letters in a box. They read that their grandmother is ill and upset, decide to set off to see their grandmother in Goa by themselves.

Bend it Like Beckham

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Gurinder Chadha
Starring: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Anupam Kher
Run time: 112 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2002
Language: English, Punjabi, Hindi with English subtitles | Country: UK

Strand: GREAT BRITISH ASIANS

Come along and help celebrate this hit movie’s 20th anniversary! Gurinder Chadha’s joyous, feel good drama tells the story of Jess, whose parents are trying to raise her in a traditional Indian way, but all she wants to do is play football like her idol, David Beckham. While her flamboyant elder sister is preparing for her ornate wedding and a life of married bliss, Jess chances upon a professional women’s football team and sees an opportunity to chase her dreams… and a soccer ball.

In cinema introduction by Director Gurinder Chadha and other special guests

Q&A with BBC’s Sunny & Shay Grewal

Bengal Shadows

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Joy Banerjee & Partho Bhattacharya
Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhushree Mukerjee, Richard Toye
Run time: 48 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2017
Language: Bengali, English, French with English subtitles | Country: France/India

This hard-hitting documentary brings to light a lesser-known episode of the Second World War – the 1943 famine, during which time several million people starved to death in Bengal. Today, numerous historians, researchers and writers, from both India and Britain, blame the British Empire for the famine that occurred whilst the subcontinent was under its rule. Some historians allege that Winston Churchill was accountable for the famine and even refer to it as a crime against humanity. The film gives a voice to historians, researchers and survivors, who were witness to these tragic events.

22 June: Post screening discussion with Professors Amartya Sen & Tirthankar Roy

Berlin

LIFF Festival Screening: 2023

Director: Atul Sabharwal
Starring: Aparshakti Khurana, Ishwak Singh, Rahul Bose, Anupriya Goenka, Kabir Bedi
Run time: 124 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2022
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles | Country: India

Opening Gala

Probably the most cleverly-constructed Indian film of 2023, writer-director Atul Sabharwal’s compelling spy thriller is set in the Delhi of the early 90s, where Indian government security factions compete for supremacy ahead of the Russian President’s visit. Sign language teacher Pushkin Verma, played by Aparshakti Khurana (Jubilee) is lured into the dark world of espionage. He finds himself forced to interrogate – in sign language – a deaf man, Ashok Kumar played by Ishwak Singh (Rocket Boys) who’s been accused of spying. However, as the seemingly innocent Ashok gradually exposes that he has been a witness to information dealing and murders that could bring down the heads of security forces, Pushkin’s life is very quickly turned upside down, and he becomes a pawn in the game of violent secrets that emerge.

Special guest Q&A expected

Q&A will be BSL interpreted/signed

Bhasmasur

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Nishil Sheth
Starring: Trimala Adhikari, Mittal Chouhan, Raghav Dutt, Imran Rasheed, Bhushan Vikas, Ravi Goswami
Run time: 75 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2017
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles | Country: India

The former thief Dhaanu is heavily in financial debt, he returns to his Rajasthan village from the city to hide from a moneylender. His back against the wall, he decides to sell the prized family donkey, Bhasmasur, with whom his son, Tipu, shares a special bond. The trio set off by foot on a journey across the arid desert  towards the city. Along the way numerous events take place bringing the absent father and his son closer together. As they arrive in the city however their relationship is put to an unexpected test.

Bird of Dusk

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Sangeeta Datta
Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Nandita Das, Aparna Sen, Kaushik Gangully, Dorothee Wenner, Konkona Sen Sharma
Run time: 92 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2018
Language: Bengali and English with English subtitles | Country: UK/India/Spain

A fearless, elegant and poetic insight into the career and private life of the late and legendary director Rituparno Ghosh, who we are proud to say attended our festival in our early days. Sangeeta Datta’s film invites reflections by some of Indian cinemas finest actors and filmmakers who recall Ghosh’s impact on their lives including Sharmila Tagore, Aparna Sen, Arjun Rampal, Nandita Das and Prasenjit Chatterjee. These are montaged with Ghosh’s films and his interviews depicting amongst other things an artist’s relationship to their beloved city Kolkata and a personal crusade to find their non-gender specific identity.

Q&A with Sangeeta Datta and guests

BitterSweet

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Ananth Narayan Mahadevan
Starring: Akshaya Gaurav, Suresh Vishwakamra, Anil Nagarkar
Run time: 101 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2020
Language: Marathi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: Young Rebel

World premiered at Busan Film Festival, Ananth Mahadevan’s story is based on true life Indian crop workers struggles. In need of money, young Sugana quits college to work in the sugarcane fields with her family. Workers arrive by the truckload to work in this cash rich industry, but nothing is how it seems. Suguna discovers a harsh truth. She is absent for three days to accommodate her menstrual cycle and upon her return learns that she will have to pay a fine for the missed days. Hard up for money and with the system rigged against her, Sugana faces a harrowing choice that will affect the rest of her life.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Online Q&A with Ananth Narayan Mahadevan

Bombay Talkies | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Katrina Kaif, Randeep Hooda, Rani Mukerji, Saqib Saleem, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Naman Jain, Vineet Kumar Singh.
Run time: 127 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2013
Language: Hindi / Marathi with English subtitles | Country: India

Mumbai’s spectacular homage to 100 years of Indian cinema is a compilation of four films shot by some of its finest directors. Karan Johar’s Ajeeb Dastaan Hain Yeh is the story of a cheeky, gay man Avinash who becomes friends with his female boss Gayatri. She invites her new friend home for dinner but Avinash soon discovers Gayatri’s husband has a secret. Dibakar Banerjee’s Star is based on Satyajit Ray’s short story about a struggling actor who gets a role as an extra in a Bollywood film, and he has this one last chance to prove himself to the world and his daughter. Zoya Aktar’s joyful Sheila Ki Jawaani tells of a 12-year-old boy whose dad wants him to play football, but he secretly wants to dance like his Bollywood goddess Katrina Kaif. With the help of his sister the boy chases his dreams. Cult director Anurag Kashyap’s Murabba shows a young man, Vijay, from small town Uttar Pradesh travelling to the lights of Mumbai to fulfil his father’s almost impossible last wish, to request a favour of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan. Don’t miss this red carpet movie!

Brahman Naman

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Q.
Starring: Shashank Arora, Tanmay Dhanania, Chaitanya Varad.
Run time: 95 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2016
Language: English | Country: UK/India

PLAY TRAILER >

Festival favourite director ‘Q’ (Gandu, Tasher Desh) returns with this In-Betweeners style coming-of-age comedy backed by a rock anthem score. Set in 1980s Bangalore, know-it all teenager Naman (Shashank Arora), and his fellow nerdy mates Ajay and Ramu win every local quiz competition and get hammered on the prize money. Then their big chance comes as the All-India Quiz Final in Calcutta is announced. The three quiz musketeers set out on a chaotic train ride north, but on the journey Naman has a mighty crush on the super-quiz heroine Naina. Naman and his mate’s quest for glory by outsmarting their rivals gets confused with exploding testosterone levels and the trio slide into a mad-cap adventure with hilarious consequences.

(Contains some explicit sexual scenes).

Bread & Belonging

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Sonia Filinto

Run time: 51 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2020
Language: Konkani, English, Kannada with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

Set in the small but vibrant Indian state of Goa, Sonia Filinto’s documentary tells a heart-warming story of food and cultural migration through the lens of Goa’s most famous bread, pão. The film follows Alzira and her family who have been quietly following their love for baking for generations, but are nowadays struggling to keep their business alive in a changing world. Not far away, Kiran and his co-workers run a bakery with the tenacity of migrants, adapting to a new trade, new language and even new food. Meanwhile, Marius, a returning migrant with family roots in Goa, is on a mission to bring pão back to its former glory.

Online Q&A with Sonia Filinto

Also streaming online on LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Brick Lane

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Sarah Gavron
Starring: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson
Run time: 102 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2007
Language: English, Bengali, Arabic with English subtitles | Country: UK, Bangladesh

Strand: GREAT BRITISH ASIANS

Director Sarah Gavron’s (Rocks, Suffragette), BAFTA winning debut feature tells the story of Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee), who’s mother always told her she was a born survivor. Trapped within the four walls of her small flat in East London, in a loveless marriage with the middle aged Chanu, Nazneen however fears her soul is quietly dying. Hearing stories of her sister’s carefree life back in Bangladesh, Nazneen struggles to accept her lot, and tries to plough on with her life, that’s until a handsome and hotheaded young market trader comes knocking at her door. Actor Tannishtha Chatterjee gained international notoriety with this controlled, yet commanding central performance.
 

In cinema Q&A with Sarah Gavron and Monica Ali

Bridge

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Amit Ranjan Biswas
Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Sandhya Mridul
Run time: 100 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2016
Language: Bengali with English Subtitles | Country: UK, India

Satyajit Ray’s beloved actor Soumitra Chatterjee heads up the cast of this life-affirming tale. On a suicide bridge outside Kolkata, two strangers meet with one idea in mind. An elderly widower sees a young woman about to jump. Forgetting his own suicide attempt, he stops her from jumping. Taking her into his care, he discovers her story, and what had seemed a dead end to both lives morphs into a crossroads.

BSL Special Double Bill: For Each Other & Double Discrimination

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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SHORT FILMS

For Each Other
Year: 2019 | Country: India
Director: Rima Das | Run time: 22 mins | Language: Assamese with English subtitles

Malti is an earnest shop owner and Ramen a flamboyant tempo driver. Together they pave the way to connect their quaint neighbourhood in Assam to the outside world but when testing times befall their town will they be able to stand up for each other.

Double Discrimination
Year: 2015 | Country: UK
Director: Rinkoo Barpaga | Run time: 28 mins | Language: Silent with English subtitles

Double Discrimination is a personal yet hard hitting documentary by Rinkoo Bargapa, exploring peoples experiences of racism within the Deaf community.

BSL Signed Q&A with special guests

Bulbul Can Sing

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Rima Das
Starring: Arnali Das, Manoranjan Das, Banita Thakuriya, Pakija Begam
Run time: 95 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2018
Language: Assamese, Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

Assamese director Rima Das returns to LIFF with this groundbreaking coming-of-age tale that has swept up prestigious awards at Berlin, Dublin, Singapore and Mumbai film festivals. Three teenage best friends in rural Assam, northeast India, are forging their distinct personalities, but as the girls secretly meet boys, they soon come face to face with outmoded cultural traditions that challenge their family and place in the community, but most importantly their bonds as loyal friends. Rima Das made a global splash with Village Rockstars and Bulbul Can Sing continues to prove her humane, world-class talent.

BSL signed screening Stratford Picturehouse.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Q&A with Director Rima Das

Call Me Dancer

LIFF Festival Screening: 2023

Director: Leslie Shampaine, Pip Gilmour

Run time: 84 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2023
Language: English, Hindi with English subtitles | Country: USA

This live-your-dream documentary charts the journey of Manish, a charismatic teenage street dancer from Mumbai, who dreams of entering the world of ballet against the wishes of his struggling parents. He gains tutorship from a master Israeli ballet teacher who gives him the determination to keep going. But when he is pitted against another boy who’s got the attention of the Royal Ballet School in London, Manish realizes he must push himself to his physical limits if he has any chance to succeed.

Chai With Chadha

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

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FILMMAKER CONVERSATIONS

Join us for a rare in-depth conversation with the UK’s most prolific drama director of Indian origin. Gurinder Chadha’s richly diverse career started with high-impact shorts at the end of the 1980s followed by her 1993 hit Bhaji On The Beach, which became an instant classic. Her mainstream mega hit was of course the unforgettable Bend It Like Beckham, which like much of her scripts referenced a uniquely British Asian experience. Ahead of releases of her much anticipated new feature Blinded By The Light and new ITV drama Beecham House, we find out what drives and inspires this iconic talent.

Chasing Sustainability: Tales From South Asia

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Sidra Altaf (The Sea's Guardian), Omkar Khandagale and Aditya Thakkar (Droughtlands) and Joel Elias (Green Wars)

Run time: 76 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2021

Strand: SAVE THE PLANET

A collection of three short films curated by Dr. Anjali Jayakumar looking at the effect climate change has on the people and ecosystem of South Asia, from the mangroves and sea life of Karachi, the droughts of Maharashtra that have effected the sugarcane plantations and the livelihoods of the workers to the farms of Kerala and the impact environmental regulations have had on their lives.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 48 hours]

Chhello Show (Last Film Show)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Pan Nalin
Starring: Bhavin Rabari, Bhavesh Shrimali, Richa Meena
Run time: 100 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2021
Language: Gujarati with English subtitles | Country: India, France

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

Samay, a mischievous nine-year-old boy living in a remote village in Gujarat discovers film for the first time and is spellbound. Against his fathers he regularly visits the local cinema and forms a bond with the projectionsist who, in exchange for his lunch box, lets him watch movies for free. As their friendship grows, Samay learns more about the endless possibilities cinema brings and sets off in pursuit of his 35mm dreams, unaware of the adventures that lie in wait. Pan Nalin’s latest is not only a homage to the cinema of the past, but a joyous reminder of the awe and wonder of a child’s imagination. This feel-good film was an audience favourite at Tribeca Film Festival.

Q&A with director Pan Nalin

Chuskit

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Priya Ramasubban
Starring: Jigmet Dewa Lhamo, Morup Namgyal, Yangchen Dolma
Run time: 90 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2018
Language: Ladakhi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

Based on a true story in the mountains of Ladakh, we meet Chuskit – a joyous and strong-minded young girl whose dreams of going to school are cut short after an accident leaves her unable to walk. While her friends start school she is confined to life indoors in the company of her strict grandfather, Dorje, who is adamant she must stay at home. As her battle with her grandfather intensifies and Chuskit’s hopes are getting crushed the family decides on a dramatic path of change.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Cinemawala

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Kaushik Ganguly
Starring: Paran Bandopadhay, Parambrata Chatterjee,Arun Guha Thakurta.
Run time: 105 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2016
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

The new tale by Kaushik Ganguly, one of West Bengal’s most accomplished directors, depicts a love-torn nostalgia for the passing age of film. Pranabendu Das is a semi-retired cinema owner from a small town in West Bengal. He owns a movie theatre ‘Kamalini’ named after his former wife. He and his ageing projectionist lovingly tend their film stock and wonderfully ancient movie projector, but the audience doesn’t come any more and the cinema is falling into disrepair. Meanwhile for Pranabendu’s opportunist son Prakash, who has no idealist aspirations, business comes first, he stashes pirated DVDs of new films in the family home and sells them in town. As Pranabendu faces the heart-breaking closure of his beloved cinema and the police come to call about Prakash’s bootleg activities, father and son both purveyors of cinema in their own ways, come to loggerheads.

City of Gold

LIFF Festival Screening: 2010

Director: Mahesh Manjrekar
Starring: Shashank Shende, Seema Biswas, Ankush Choudhary
Run time: 145 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2010
Language: Hindi. Marathi, English | Country: India

Set at a similar time as Slum Dog Millionaire, this is a powerful tale about a great time of change in Mumbai – regarded by many as the ‘City of Gold’. The Dhuri family of mill workers, headed by their strong-willed mother, played by the great Seema Biswas (Bandit Queen), live on the edge of the slums. They struggle to survive the abyss of poverty as Mumbai’s great mills are struck down by political corruption and commercial greed, to make way for glittering new shopping malls and 5 star hotels. As dad looses his job and they tip into the abyss, the young sons and daughters must all make heart-wrenching decisions to save the family: mixing with the darker side of under-world power; and trying to marry themselves off to men with jobs. None is as great as that of budding writer son, Baba, who is un-able to sell his scripts and makes an even more desperate sacrifice.

Venus

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Eisha Marjara
Starring: Debargo Sanyal, Jamie Mayers, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Zena Darawalla, Gordon Warnecke
Run time: 95 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2017
Language: English. no English subtitles | Country: Canada

An award-winning, laugh-out-loud comedy about alternative family values, self-empowerment and love. Sid is a Montreal Punjabi, who after years of struggling with their gender identity has decided to come out as a woman. Other than Sid’s mom crying a lot, all seems to be moving in the right direction, that is until a 14-year-old boy turns up and insists that Sid is his long lost dad from a teenage affair. Shocked – obviously, Sid’s world rapidly spirals out of orbit as Sid attempts to nurture this latch-on teenager who thinks having a transgender Dad is “cool”, an in-the-closet partner and an about to combust Punjabi mom.

Q&A with Director Eisha Marjara and others

CLOSING NIGHT: Sexy Durga

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Sanal Kumar Sasidharan
Starring: Rajshri Deshpande, Kannan Nayer, Vedh
Run time: 85 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2017
Language: Malayalam with English Subtitles | Country: India

The festival closes with a gripping film noir, white-knuckle ride. Sexy Durga won the prestigious Tiger Award for Best Film at this year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival and a host of other accolades worldwide. On a long and lonely midnight highway, North Indian migrant Durga and Kabeer, a Kerelite youth, are running away from their past. They hitch a lift, but soon realise that their all-male car hosts are seriously unhinged small time gangsters transporting arms. As their journey takes a sharp road bend into a surreal hell, complete with masked and mysterious Durga Puja festivities, the couple must fight to survive the night. Not to be missed.

The screening is accompanied by a filmmaker Q&A and presentation of the Satyajit Ray Short Film Award with a screening of the short film.

Court

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Chaitanya Tamhane
Starring: Vivek Gomber, Vira Sathidar, Geetanjali Kulkarni.
Run time: 116 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2014
Language: Marathi with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >          FILM WEBSITE >

Chaitanya Tamhane’s tightly scripted and confidently directed second feature is set around a single court case in a Maharashtran town. Within this seemingly simple courtroom drama, a subtle and fascinating exploration of state of the nation India, westernised versus revisionist traditionalist values is uncovered. The outcome is increasingly unsettling, even dangerous, as the seeming stability and order of the British Raj based court system, is pitted against a changing India. Tamhane’s fixed camera framing of tableaux-like scenes of the court and city streets, cleverly creates a sense of increasing unease in the viewer. An ageing, activist, folk singer is charged with inciting a sewerage worker to commit suicide by one of his ‘inflammatory’ songs. His defence lawyer, a westernised man defends the right’s of the artist, while the female Prosecutor states the singer, as the police have described him, is a threat to national security.

Court

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Chaitanya Tamhane

Run time: 116 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2019
Language: Marathi with English subtitles | Country: India

YEAR ROUND PROGRAMME

Chaitanya Tamhane’s tightly scripted and confidently directed second feature is set around a single court case in a Maharashtrian town. Within this seemingly simple courtroom drama, a subtle and fascinating exploration of the state of the nation India, westernised versus revisionist traditionalist values is uncovered. The outcome is increasingly unsettling, even dangerous, as the seeming stability and order of the British Raj based court system, is pitted against a changing India. An ageing, activist, folk singer is charged with inciting a sewerage worker to commit suicide by one of his ‘inflammatory’ songs. His defence lawyer, a westernised man defends the rights of the artist, while the female Prosecutor states the singer, as the police have described him, is a threat to national security.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

CRD

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Kranti Kanade
Starring: Mrinmayee Godbole, Saurabh Saraswat, Vinay Sharma, Abhay Mahajan.
Run time: 108 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2016
Language: Hindi and English with English subtitles | Country: India

Set in the world of college theatre, CRD probes fascism and fierce competition in the arts. The battleground is an inter-collegiate drama competition where an autocratic acting coach pushes his students to mental and physical extremes. One of his most gifted students rebels against his methods and forms a rival drama troupe to compete against his own college team. He must now delve deep to find his storytelling voice while at the same time trying to keep his anger in check and rein in his rampant sex drive. This astonishing film heralds the arrival of a bold new voice in world cinema where all limits are breached and boundaries crossed. Be prepared for a breathtaking journey, the likes of which you’ve never been on before.

Cycle

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Prakash Kunte
Starring: Hrishikesh Joshi, Bhau Kaman, Priyadarshan Jadhav, Deepti Lee
Run time: 101 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2017
Language: Marathi with English Subtitles | Country: India

In the village of Bhugaon Keshav is a well-known astrologer, with an even more famous yellow cycle, known as Sunshine. The cycle, inherited from his grandfather after he passed away, is Keshav’s most prized possession. One evening two wandering thieves  steal his bike and as Keshav pines away for his beloved machine, he is unable to focus on his astrology and his predictions start going wrong. Unable to see Keshav crestfallen, the villagers band together to plan to somehow reunite the two. Cycle is a magical and life affirming story of love, hope and happiness.

Death of A Gentleman | London Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Sam Collins
Starring: Kevin Pietersen, Ravi Shastri, N. Srinivasan, Lalit Modi, Giles Clarke.
Run time: 90 mins | Certificate: 12A |
Language: English | Country: UK

PLAY TRAILER >     FILM WEBSITE >

A hard-hitting documentary of interest to cricket and non-cricket fans alike. Cricketing journalists Jarrod Kimber and Sam Collins set off on a journey to report on the current state of health of Test cricket and to investigate the impact of 20:20 cricket on the five-day game. They end up in something more sinister than they could ever have imagined. During their thrilling three-year journey they criss-cross the globe from London to Australia, from India to Dubai and back again, during which they meet players, the game’s administrators, fans and controversial cricket financiers, resulting in a film that is about much more than cricket. This is a film about passion, about money, about power and it’s a film about standing up for what you care about before it is too late.
The Bagri Foundation supports documentary films as a powerful medium to raise social awareness

Dekh Indian Circus (Watch Indian Circus)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Mangesh Hadawale
Starring: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Virendrapratap Rathore
Run time: 101 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2011
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Kajro (Chatterjee of Brick Lane) and her mute husband Jethu (Siddiqui) eke out a tough existence in rural Rajasthan. Against the backdrop of state elections a circus comes to a nearby town, their children Panni and Ghumroo nag their parents to go. Kajro finally relents and unable to pay for transport sets off with her kids on foot across the desert to fulfil this small dream for them, but the journey will require sacrifices as the parents become puppets in the circus of local politics. Stunning cinematography captures the severe beauty of the Rajasthan countryside while the cast led by Chatterjee and Siddiqui (also see in Gangs of Wasseypur), deliver powerfully underplayed performances in this small film with a big heart. The film won the Audience Choice Award at the Busan Film Festival.

Delhi Belly

LIFF Festival Screening: 2011

Director: Abhinay Deo
Starring: Imran Khan, Vijay Raaz, Kunaal Roy Kapur.
Run time: 145 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2011
Language: Hindi with English | Country: India

Aamir Khan’s special welcome message at LIFF 2011 > 

Irreverent, crude and downright rude this fabulous new comedy caper from modern Mumbai cocks its hat at bad-boy cults like Snatch and The Hangover, with perhaps a little peppering of the Beatles.

Led by Tashi (played by the puppy dog-eyed, teen-heart throb Imran Khan), a dopey bundle of mates find themselves in a whole lot of trouble when they accidentally mix up a bag containing a stool sample (one of them ate the wrong Tandoori Chicken), with another bag which Tashi’s trolley-dolly girlfriend has been asked to carry a bag full of smuggled diamonds!

All sh*t breaks out when the smugglers, led by a particularly nasty villain Cow Boy (played by Vijay Raaz, Monsoon Wedding), set off after them. It also gives Tashi a chance to consider whether he wants to settle down to a suburban marriage with his nice airhostess and Mummy and Daddy in-laws, or take a bite of the wild side. Expect rickshaw chases, upset stomachs and of course, a riot of mix-ups and chases, with unsuspecting English tourists ducking for cover.

Delhi in a Day

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Prashant Nair
Starring: Victor Banerjee, Lillete Dubey, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Lee Williams, Anjali Patil.
Run time: 88 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2011
Language: English | Country: India

Like Monsoon Wedding, this dark comedy explores the life of Delhi’s upper class society and the huge class differences between the nouveau riche and their have-not servants. A naïve young English man Jasper (Williams) making his first trip to India comes to stay at the mansion of the eccentric Gambhir family who, as he is the son of a powerful business associate, make a fuss of him. Mukund (Kharbanda), the jovial patriarch of the family, struggles to meet the demands of his sharp-tongued wife Kalpana (Dubey), who runs their team of servants, with a rod of iron. Idealistic Jasper is however immediately attracted by one of the servant girls Rohini (Patil), a pretty nineteen year old who dreams of being s Bollywood star, but when Jasper’s money disappears the status quo of the house is rocked.

Dev.D

LIFF Festival Screening: 2010

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Starring: Abhay Deol, Mahie Gill, Kalki Koechlin
Run time: 144 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2009
Language: Hindi | Country: India

From Anurag Kashyap, who’s at the vanguard of cutting edge Indian directors, comes this brilliant, luxuriantly visual contemporary re-telling of the classic story of Devdas. Teenage Dev is forced to leave his childhood sweetheart, Paro, behind when he is sent abroad. He struggles through his studies and years later returns home to India where his family hopes he will marry Paro. However, Dev’s promiscuity sees him lose her. He realises too late that he truly loves her and becomes tortured by regret, hurtling into a downward spiral of drugs and alcohol, with his only solace coming from Chanda, a prostitute with traumas of her own. Inevitably, Dev falls foul of the law and redemption proves elusive. The film’s path-breaking narrative struc-ture and rousing musical score capture the zeitgeist and underbelly of modern India, with Deol’s laconic portrayal of Dev instantly establishing him as the poster boy of alternate cinema from the subcontinent.

Dhanak (Rainbow) | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Nagesh Kukunoor
Starring: Krrish Chhabria, Hetal Gada, Vipin Sharma, Suresh Menon, Vijay Maurya.
Run time: 103 mins | Certificate: PG |
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

This uplifting, enchanting and magical story revolves around the relationship between a 10-year old girl Pari, a Shah Rukh Khan fan and Chotu, her blind 8-year old brother who is a die-hard Salman Khan devotee. Inspired by seeing Shah Rukh Khan endorsing sight restoring surgery, Pari leads her brother on an epic journey across the desert state of Rajasthan to the location where the actor is shooting his latest film in the hope that he will arrange for the vision restoring operation and fulfil the promise she had made to Chotu that he will regain his sight when he turns nine. On the way they meet a host of colourful characters that sometimes help and sometimes thwart their plan but always push them in the right path towards their destination. The film won the Generation Kplus section of the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.

Dobaaraa

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Starring: Taapsee Pannu, Saswata Chaterjee, Rahul Bhatt
Run time: 120 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2022
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

OPENING NIGHT GALA | RED CARPET FROM 17:00

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

India’s internationally best known director, Anurag Kashyap, returns to the festival, this surreal Sliding Doors style story, telling of a young nurse (Taapsee Pannu), who moves in with her husband and daughter, next to a derelict house. Searching through the new place they come across an old camcorder. Playing it during an electric storm the nurse, freakishly connects live to a little boy who lived in the house decades before, but died. In an attempt to stop the boy’s death she begs him not to go next door to the deserted house. He delays and this not only disrupts time, but her own life story with terrible consequences.

Q&A with Anurag Kashyap and other special guests
Interview by Anna Smith (Girls On Film Podcast, Deadline & BBC)

Ciné Lumière screening in liaison with:

Doob (No Bed of Roses)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Mostofa Sarwar Farooki
Starring: Irrfan Khan, Parno Mittra, Nusrat Imroz Tisha, Rokeya Prachy
Run time: 86 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2017
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: Bangladesh/India

Successful movie director Javed Hasan finds himself in a midlife crisis, questioning whether marriage and career have demanded too much from him. A tryst with Nitu, his daughter’s childhood friend, turns into a national scandal and his loving family is torn apart. Javed and Nitu marry, but it’s no bed of roses for the couple as they receive the wrath of judgmental Bangladeshi society. The latest film from Bangladesh’s most renowned filmmaker features a powerful central performance from internationally respected Indian actor Irrfan Khan. The film has been festooned with accolades at the Moscow and Shanghai film festivals. 

Q&A with director Mostofa Farooki

Dug Dug

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Ritwik Pareek
Starring: Altaf Khan, Gaurav Soni, Yogendra Singh
Run time: 107 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: India
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: 2021

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

Ritwik Pareeks striking and infectiously funny satire explores the roots of faith and the commercialisation of religion. After a freak accident kills an alcoholic middle aged man named Thakur, the Dug-Dug brand motorcycle he is riding is taken away from the scene and locked up at a nearby police station. The following morning, the bike mysteriously appears back at the site of the crash. It is once again taken away by baffled police but once again the next day returns to the scene of the accident. Word of this strange occurance spreads through the village leading the locals to believe they are witnessing divinity and the work of a higher power at play.

Q&A with Ritwik Pareek

Earth

LIFF Festival Screening: 2023

Director: Deepa Mehta

Run time: 101 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 1998
Language: Hindi, English with English with subtitles | Country: India, Canada

Set during the bloody and violent partition of India in 1947, Deepa Mehta’s second film in her “elemental trilogy” is an extraordinary tale of politics, love and revenge.

As India teeters on the brink of self-rule, Lenny – an eight-year-old, polio-stricken Parsee girl – witnesses the deep divisions that are soon to ravage her country. Part of a wealthy, non-partisan family in Lahore (an Indian city soon to become the capital of Pakistan), Lenny is looked after by her loving nanny Shanta (Nandita Das), who is caught between the affections Hasan, a peace advocating Muslim (Rahul Khanna) and Dil Navaz, the charming Ice Candy Man (Aamir Khan).

As reports of violence begin to surface in radio broadcasts and the political tensions grow, Shanta’s life is thrown into turmoil as she tries to keep Lenny safe, while the effects of the impending partition bring devastation to communities.

Eaten By Lions

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Jason Wingard
Starring: Antonio Aakeel, Jack Carroll, Asim Chaudhry, Johnny Vegas, Nitin Ganatra, Kevin Eldon and Darshan Jariwal
Run time: 99 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2018
Language: English (no subtitles), | Country: UK

Two brothers, one mother, three dads.

Omar and Pete are half-brothers. When their parents are eaten by lions they embark on a journey to find Omar’s real father. What follows is a funny, heart-warming journey of self-discovery for both boys…in Blackpool. The Choudray family represents a truly contemporary example of modern multicultural Britain – but what will the brothers make of their eccentric newfound family. In contrast to the old-fashioned stereotypes about Blackpool, the comedy is sharp, current and non-stop. It tells a charming tale of one boys search for his biological father and his own sense of identity, and the unexpected ways in which friendships and a sense of belonging are formed in a multicultural society.

Q&A with Jason Wingard and special Guests

Elippathayam (Rat-Trap) | Classic

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Starring: Karamana Janardhanan Nair, Sharada, Jalaja, Rajam K. Nair.
Run time: 121 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 1982
Language: Malayalam with English subtitles | Country: India

In this milestone of Indian cinema revered director Adoor Gopalakrishnan deftly documents the tale of a man and his three sisters who cannot comprehend the sweeping changes arising from the demise of feudalism in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Drawing from the experiences of his own family, Gopalakrishnan sets the action in a crumbling mansion where once-proud lives disintegrate in near silence. The film won the Sutherland Award at the London Film Festival in 1982, the only Indian film to have won the coveted award after Satyajit Ray’s win in 1959 for The World of Apu.

Emuthi Puthi (The Very Fishy Trip)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Kulanandani Mahanta
Starring: Pratibha Choudhury, Neetali Das, Srishti Sharma
Run time: 103 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2021
Language: Assamese with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

Head strong teen Ritika hates her life under the strict control of her mother Indira, who also happens to be a senior cop. Ritika wants to escape. Ritika’s aged but free spirited grandmother has long dreamed of eating her favourite rural fish curry and then disappearing from the world. The pair come to a pact of convenience to help each other out and one night run away from home. What ensues is a frantic road adventure that takes this unlikely duo to unexpected places, coming across all manner of madcap characters, while Ritika’s police woman mum is hot on their trail.

Enemy? | International Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Dinesh P. Bhonsle
Starring: Meenacshi Martins, Salil Naik, Antonio Crasto
Run time: 94 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2015
Language: Konkani with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

In the midst of the festive season, a Goan Catholic family discovers that they have lost their property to the Government and their family honour is at stake. An Indian army captain and his mother are dismayed when corrupt civil servants and politicians gang up against them using the Enemy Property Act of 1968, enacted after the Indo-Pak war in 1965, to usurp their prime land. During their fight against the establishment they find that they are not alone in their struggle and there are several other Goan families who are going through the same crisis. As the tension and drama builds up, the captain finds himself pushed to the edge. The tense narrative also finds time to incorporate the vibrant colours and music of Goa while telling a chilling and compelling tale.

Experimenta India - Liff @ The Tate Modern

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

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EXPERIMENTA INDIA – LIFF @ THE TATE MODERN

Alongside the commercial cinema of narrative and spectacle in India, there has always been another practice call it avant-garde, experimental, or artists’ film and video. Since its inception in 2003, Experimenta, the independent international festival for experimental cinema in India, has become a significant forum in South Asia for the exhibition, discussion, and dissemination of ideas about new genres of film. Shai Heredia, Experimenta’s Festival Director, has curated this programme featuring two screenings of recent innovations in moving image art from India.

EXPERIMENTA INDIA 1

Duration | 57 mins
Tate Modern | Starr Auditorium
PRESENCE | Ekta Mittal and Yashaswini Raghunandan | India 2012 | Colour | Sound | HD | 18 mins

Presence is the second film from the Behind the Tin Sheets Archive. Landscapes shift, people move from place to place – time passes and spaces evolve. Through this metamorphosis, new things try to replace the old. Some remain and linger and some go missing and disappear. We remember and we also forget. Between this, we encounter the invisible. This film reflects the subconscious of migrant workers against an urban landscape in metamorphosis. As they carry their stories in and out of many cities, the cities bear witness to these fragments. A point of impermanence and permanence collide, in close proximity with the filmmakers’ haunt within the city. Suspended from time and space, the familiar begins to render the unfamiliar.

RESIDUE | Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya | India 2011 | Colour | Sound | 35mm | 39 mins

This film was shot in a redundant Thermal power plant in the outskirts of the city of Guwahati. It forms a response to the artists’ interest in constructed signs that can never be replicated or remembered and in the relationship between matter and memory. There is an endless circularity and an unbearable silence — the pause A point of impermanence and permanence collide, in close proximity with the filmmakers’ haunt within the city. Suspended from time and space, the familiar begins to render the unfamiliar.

EXPERIMENTA INDIA 2

Duration | 59 mins
Tate Modern | Starr Auditorium

JAN VILLA | Natasha Mendonca | India 2012 | Colour + B&W | Sound | 16mm transferred to HD | 20 mins

After the monsoon floods in 2005 that submerged Bombay, the filmmaker returns to her native city to examine the personal impact of this devastating event. The result is Jan Villa, a tapestry of images that studies the space of a post-colonial metropolis but in a way that deeply implicates the personal. The destruction wreaked by the floods becomes a telling and a dismantling of other devastations and the sanctuaries of family and home. In its structure, Jan Villa is a vortex, drawing to its center all that surrounds it.

CITY BEYOND | Shreyasi Kar | India 2011 | Colour | Sound | 35mm | 10 mins

City Beyond is a film that speculates about the lives led by inhabitants of a submerged civilisation. The superstructure has been recently discovered in the crevices of the ocean floor. The film moves through the submerged landscape, gathering glimpses of life, times and the end of a lost society.

THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE AIR | Iram Ghufran | India 2011 | Colour | Sound | 35mm | 29 mins

There is Something in the Air is a call from the periphery of sanity. A series of dream narratives and accounts of spiritual possession as experienced by women ‘petitioners’ at the shrine of a Sufi saint in northern India. Drama unfolds via dreams, appearances of djinns and disappearances of women. The shrine becomes a space for expressions of longing and transgression. The film invites the viewer to a fantastical world, where fear and desire is experienced through dreams and ‘afflictions of air’. The shrine is a space where performance becomes the only rule of engagement, and one can begin to think about the possibilities that ‘insanity’ produces.

Farhan Akhtar | Screen Talk

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

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Farhan Akhtar is the renaissance man of Indian entertainment, being a director, producer, actor, singer, screenwriter, lyricist and television host. The son of legendary writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar and screenwriter, actor and director Honey Irani, Farhan made his directorial debut with Dil Chahta Hai, a film that changed filmmaking mores in Bollywood. He made his lyric writing debut with Bride and Prejudice and his acting and singing debut with Rock On!! His turn as the Olympian athlete Milkha Singh in the biopic Bhaag Milkha Bhaag has seen him win every major Indian acting award this year!

This engrossing Screen Talk interview was filmed at the BFI – actor, director and producer Farhan Akhtar talks about making his directorial debut with Dil Chatha Hai (2001), his acting debut in Rock On!! (2008) and working with Shah Rukh Khan in Don (2006). Akhtar also explains how his parents have affected his work.

BFI SOUTHBANK

Fire + Introduction by Bidisha Mamata

LIFF Festival Screening: 2023

Director: Deepa Mehta
Starring: Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, Kulbhushan Kharbanda
Run time: 108 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 1996
Language: English, Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India, Canada

Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi give superb performances as two unhappily married women living in Delhi who fall in love in Deepa Mehta’s powerful melodrama.

Radha (Shabana Azmi) is unwavering in her devotion to her husband, Ashok (Kulbushan Kharbanda), despite their passionless arranged marriage. Meanwhile, Ashok’s brother Jatin (Jaaved Jaaferi) has brought home his new wife, Sita (Nandita Das), but is unwilling to give up his relationship with his Chinese girlfriend. Gradually, a slow-burning love blossoms between the two women.

Loosely based on Ismat Chughtai’s short story “Lihaaf” (“The Quilt”), which became the subject of an obscenity trial in India in 1942, Fire, the first of Deepa Mehta’s ‘Elements’ trilogy, was the subject of violent protests in India, with extremists hurling Molotov cocktails at the screens. It remains an intensely powerful and beautifully acted romance, which kick-started a national conversation about queer rights in India.

Introduction by Bidisha Mamata

Bidisha is a journalist, broadcaster and film- and stills-maker. She works for the BBC, Sky News, Channel 5, CNN and The Guardian and The Observer. Her latest publication is The Future of Serious Art (2020) and her short films include An Impossible Poison (2017) and the Aurora series (2020-2023).

Fireflies in The Abyss

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Chandrasekhar Reddy
Starring: Nishant Rai, Raj Rai, Suraj Subba.
Run time: 88 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2015
Language: Nepali / Hindi / English with English subtitles | Country: India / UK

PLAY TRAILER >     FILM WEBSITE >

This absorbing documentary follows Suraj a 11-year-old boy who works in the ‘rat-hole’ mines in the Jaintia Hills of North East India. There are narrow strips of coal requiring children to descend steep, sheer chutes and burrow into narrow horizontal tunnels to scratch coal out of hard rock, armed with nothing more than a pickaxe and a head torch. In these hostile pits, every day is a game of death. With Suraj’s story as the primary narrative, the life in the mining camp and the intertwining fates of the miners are explored. Most of the events characterise the choices made under the difficult circumstances that they experience, see around them and have to continually resolve – both internally and externally. Contrasting the various responses elicits drama, irony and humour, while gradually building up a composite picture of lives under unusual and extraordinary circumstances.

The Bagri Foundation supports documentary films as a powerful medium to raise social awareness.

Flight

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Alex Pillai
Starring: Mina Anwar, Kulvinder Ghir, Roshan Seth, Meera Syal
Run time: 75 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 1997
Language: English | Country: UK

CLOSING NIGHT GALA

A talented British Asian star cast comes together in this Northern family drama, sensitively written by Tanika Gupta and directed by Alex Pillai. Shikha (Mina Anwar), a young Hindu school girl from Lancashire town Accrington, secretly falls in love with a Muslim boy. As word gets out about their tryst, she is threatened and is forced to flee to London to escape the wrath of her patriarch father (Roshan Seth), who sends out community bounty hunters after her. In the big city she finds refuge in a secret women’s shelter, where she discovers a new found sense of freedom, but her past soon catches up with her.
 

Q&A with Alex Pillai, cast and crew

For The Love of a Man

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Rinku Kalsy
Starring: K. Hariharan, Uma Vangal, G. Mani.
Run time: 85 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2015
Language: Tamil / English with English subtitles | Country: India / Netherlands

PLAY TRAILER >

Actor, Leader, Hero, God. For his fans, the superstar Rajinikanth is all of these. Men from various generations alter their lives, sell their belongings, and place fandom above their families in devotion to the iconic actor, a man who has inspired a fanatic cult following across the world ranging from India to Japan. This riveting documentary explores how fandom is expressed through enormous posters, elaborate public rituals, and the frenzied atmosphere inside theatres has deep social, political, and devotional foundations in South India. Fandom is about more than cinema – it is about brotherhood, identity, or even social aspiration. The film follows various stories – performers seeking a shot at fame by mimicking the star, families managing the consequences of the fans’ spending on movies, theatre owners worrying about fans running wild.

The Bagri Foundation supports documentary films as a powerful medium to raise social awareness.

Four Lions

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Christopher Morris
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Adeel Akhtar, Kayvan Novak and Nigel Lindsay
Run time: 97 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2010
Language: English | Country: UK

Strand: GREAT BRITISH ASIANS

From the minds behind Brass Eye and Peep show comes this rip-roaring comedy about four British Muslims who set out to commit an act of terror. What follows is a hilarious, sharply written satire looking into the ideology of idiots. Covering a difficult topic with extremely sharp writing, it’s a film that manages to avoid being insensitive and even becomes emotional.

Gali Guliyan (In the Shadows)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Dipesh Jain
Starring: Manoj Bajpayee, Neeraj Kabi, Shahana Goswami, Ranvir Shorey, Om Singh
Run time: 117 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2017
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles | Country: India/ UK

In the walled city of Old Delhi, a reclusive shopkeeper spends his days obsessively watching people through hidden closed circuit cameras. When he overhears a boy being beaten by a man, he begins to frantically search for the child. As he becomes lost in the labyrinthine alleys of the city, his grasp on reality falters, until he eventually stumbles across a shocking truth about a father and an abused son. Dipesh Jain’s feature film debut is a superbly dark and atmospheric psychological thriller that expertly explores the roots of paranoia.

Q&A with director Dipesh Jain and Manoj Bajpayee

Gamak Ghar (The Village House)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Achal MIshra
Starring: Abhinav Jha, Mira Jha, Satyam Jha
Run time: 91 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2019
Language: Maithili with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

In a north Indian village, a large extended family reunites at their ancestral home to celebrate a new birth in the family. It’s a joyous and carefree occasion. Over the next two decades, through festivals and feasts, births and deaths and with children moving away to the city, the film observes the house age and fall into neglect with the passing of time. Achal Mishra’s astonishing debut feature film is the most intimate of epics, beautifully exploring the ebb and flow of family life in an ever changing world.

Online Q&A with Achal Mishra

Streaming online on LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Gandhi

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Richard Attenborough
Starring: Ben Kingsley, John Gielgud, Rohini Hattangadi
Run time: 191 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 1982
Language: English, Hindi with English subtitles | Country: UK, USA, India, South Africa

Strand: GOLDEN AGE OF CINEMA

On the epic film’s 40th anniversary, LIFF presents and re-examines the movie that brought the Gujarati independence leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi back to world attention in the 1980s, with screenings of the film even allegedly helping to spark the non-violent Czech Velvet Revolution, much as the real Gandhi’s Ahimsa campaigns had inspired earlier revolutionary movements around the world. Winning 8 Oscars with an all-star Indian and UK cast, this is a rare chance to see the full visual spectacle and unforgettable soundscape of Gandhi on the big screen at BFI’s NFT1.

Introduction by Professor Talat Ahmed and other special guests

Gandu & Gandu Circus

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Q.
Starring: Anurbata Basu, Joyraj Bhattacharya, Rituparna Sen
Run time: 89 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2010
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

India’s most radical director Q delivers a tour de force, which has excited festivals around the world. Twenty-year-old Gandu lives with his single mum in a dingy Kolkata flat. She has turned to sex work to make ends meet. His life revolves around the local internet café where he overdoses on videogames and porn until one day he bumps into Rickshaw, who introduces him to hard drugs and together they slide into a dark fantasy world where angry rap lyrics melt into visitations by the goddess Kali and an alien sex-kitten. Listen out for a stunning music track inspired by the UK’s Asian Dub Foundation. The film contains some sexually explicit imagery so don’t bring your mum!

GANDU CIRCUS with SUSHEELA RAMAN AT BFI

The London Indian Film Festival is delighted to announce that Mercury nominated musician Susheela Raman will perform alongside acclaimed filmmaker and rapper Q, in a unique first of its kind event that marries the heady vibe of the controversial film Gandu with a pulsating interactive concert. June 21 will see BFI Southbank reverberate to the strains of Raman and Q’s band Gandu Circus along with special guest Steve Chandra Savale from the Asian Dub Foundation, following a screening of Gandu. The Arts Council of England supports the event.

Gangs of Wasseypur | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Anurag Kashyap
Starring: Manoj Bajpai, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Reema Sen
Run time: 160 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2012
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Anurag Kashyap, the Godfather of contemporary Indian independent cinema, takes on the epic gangster genre, and produces a masterpiece that can rightfully rub shoulders with the classics of Coppola and Scorsese. Kashyap deftly delivers a firecracker of a movie set around warring mafia clans clashing for power and passion in the coal mining towns of Northern India. A weapon-loaded cast is led by Manoj Bajpai and delivers high energy performances in this sprawling tale of generations locked in violence and its ultimate impact on family and loved ones. The film is shot through with an earthy Indian sensibility where you can almost smell the fragrance of the soil, yet the filmmaking is on par with the best of the West. Bajpai, whose breakthrough performance was in Satya, written by Kashyap, dominates proceedings as an ambitious gangster with a rampant libido and a permanently cocked gun. Expect spectacular gunfights!

Gattu

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Rajan Khosa
Starring: Mohd Samad, Naresh Kumar, Jayanta Das
Run time: 90 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2011
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Set in the picturesque town of Roorkee in the Himalayan foothills, Gattu is a story of childhood passion. Gattu (Samad) lives and works at a scrap yard belonging to a man that bought him from his sick father. Gattu is however adept at slipping out of hard chores so he can indulge his passion for kite flying. He secretly enters the town’s next kite flying competition. Though illiterate, Gattu realises that his best hope of winning the competition is to fly his kite from Roorkee’s tallest building, the school. Gattu steals a uniform and brazens his way into school. A dramatic battle of the skies ensues as young Gattu uses every trick in the book to claim the lead. The film marks a triumphant return for director Rajan Khosa whose debut Dance of the Wind was much acclaimed. The film is the toast of the festival circuit worldwide and won a special mention at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Ghar Ka Pata (Home Address)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Madhulika Jalali

Run time: 67 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2020
Language: Hindi, Kashmiri, English with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

A heartfelt documentary following director Madhulika Jalali as she searches for her identity as a Kashmiri Pandit woman. In the early 90s, six-year-old Madhulika and her family fled Rainawari – a quaint suburb of Srinagar – in response to Kashmir’s separatist insurgency. Twenty four years later with no memory of her birthplace, she returns to visit her lost home with her family. Weaving together impromptu conversations, family anecdotes and stunning footage from the streets of Rainawari where she is welcomed back by her childhood neighbours, Ghar Ka Pata reveals deep and personal connections that go beyond religion and politics.

Also streaming online on LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Ghore Pherar Gaan (Homecoming Song)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Aritra Sen
Starring: Ishaa Saha, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Gourab Chatterjee, Reshmi Sen
Run time: 140 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2022
Language: Bengali, English | Country: India

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

This uplifting musical follows the journey of Tora (Ishaa Saha), a girl from the suburbs of Kolkata, to her marital home in London. Tora is in dissonance with the high-flying lives of her NRI doctor husband Ribhu and her council-woman mother-in-law Shanta, and thus starts searching for solace outside the bounds of her home. This is when Imran (Parambrata Chattopadhyay), a consummate musician from India, enters her life, making the caged bird inside her sing again and embrace life on her own terms. The film closely portrays the lives of Bengalis in London and the alienation that is felt by a new immigrant from abroad. Yet the city of London, somehow, subsumes one with time and becomes home to the lost souls.

Q&A with talent expected

Girls for Future

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Irja Von Bernstoff

Run time: 88 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2021
Language: English, Hindi, Indonesian with English subtitles | Country: Australia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Senega

Strand: Young Rebel

Girls For Future is an inspiring doc about four young front line activists, aged between 11 and 14 years old from Indonesia, Senegal, India and Australia. They represent the voice of a new generation directly affected by the climate crisis and environmental degradation at their doorstep. These four young women show tremendous endeavour, courage and power as they take on the government officials and established norms and try to bring about real world solutions to restore and protect their family and homelands, and our global climate.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 48 hours]

Goopi Gawaiya Bagha Bajaiya | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: Shilpa Ranade
Starring: Voices of Manish Bhawan, Shailendra Pande, Rajeev Raj.
Run time: 79 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2013
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Premiered at Toronto Film Festival, The World of Goopi and Bagha is a delightful and hilarious animated feature, based on a story for children of all ages immortalised by Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Goopy and Bagha are such terrible singers and musicians that they are thrown out of their own respective towns. They bump into each other in the forest and immediately become best buddies. They also then bump something more terrifying – the King of Ghosts, but he likes their terrible music so much he gives them a pair of magical slippers each and three wishes. Armed with this new magical confidence they set out on the road to adventure.

Gour Hari Dastaan: The Freedom File | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Ananth Narayan Mahadevan
Starring: Vinay Pathak, Konkona Sen Sharma, Tannishtha Chatterjee.
Run time: 111 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2014
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

Director Ananth Mahadevan whose previous film Mee Sindhutai Sapkal was a big hit with London audiences returns with a moving, true-life drama about one of the last remaining Gandhian ‘freedom fighters’ Hari Gaur Das. This elderly man is of modest means and fighting to win recognition from the bureaucratic Indian government. They want him to prove he was an Independence hero to win his right to a state pension, while locals call him a liar, and even his wife doubts his chances, Hari recalls the independence struggles of his youth and with great mental strength sets out to prove his case. There are some sparkling performances by an ensemble cast including Vinay Pathak, Konkona Sen Sharma, Ranveer Shorey and Tannishtha
Chatterjee.

Guru Lounge: British Asian Filmmakers & Artists on the Edge of Brexit

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

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The festival encourages ground-breaking debate and will be organising talks aimed at industry professionals during the festival. GURU LOUNGE presents an invaluable guide to the ever-burgeoning Indian and South Asian film industries. A must for film industry professionals interested in co-production, acting in or shooting their next project in India.

Faced with an uncertain post-Brexit future, many British Asian creative professionals are thinking about where we fit. Will intolerance increase? What are our opportunities in terms of the arts and diversity? Will funding grow, or be cut? In this panel debate, we gather leading filmmakers, artists and agencies, including the BFI’s CEO Amanda Nevill, to explore the challenges and opportunities in this new world.

Speakers include (others tbc):

Amana Nevill (CEO, BFI)
Pratibha Parmar (Filmmaker)
Harriet Finney (Deputy CEO, Creative Industries Federation)
Deborah Sathe (Cinestaan Film Company)
Gaylene Gould (BFI)
Vinay Patel (Screenwriter)

Blue Room, BFI Southbank, Monday 26th June, 6.45-8.15 pm

Guru Lounge: Chai and Chat

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

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GURU LOUNGE

Enjoy a cup or two of chai thanks to our friends at Benugo during this informative extended panel and Q&A session with luminaries from the British film industry, including funders, distributors and producers.

A unique opportunity to hear from UK Asian and BAME and Indian filmmakers, especially women, talk about their work and the challenges and opportunities they have faced in making their films. We will also explore scripting, finance, and the production process in both countries and opportunities for international co-production.  One not to miss!

PANEL MEMBERS

Meneka Das, Filmmaker and actor
Dr Chila Kumari Burman, Artist and experimental filmmaker
Naman Ramachandran, Script Writer Brahim Naman and Critic for Variety magazine
Paul Brett, Producer of Flying Tiger Productions
Tariq Wahr, ScreenSkills Film Production Liaison Manager

Supported by ScreenSkills

Guru Lounges are open to all emerging talent working in film. Tickets are £5 each.

Limited capacity. Please book early to avoid disappointment.

Guru Lounge: Meet The Filmmakers

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

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GURU LOUNGE

LIFF is proud to welcome to the UK many South Asian filmmakers – whether early, mid or established career professionals – to present the premieres of their films. This is an ideal opportunity to get up close and personal with these important and inspiring artists. Networking is encouraged!

THE FILMMAKERS

Chris Hainsworth, Film Producer
Praveen Morchhale, Film Director
Anjali Bhushan, Film Director
Iesh Thapar, Film Director
Gaurav Bakshi, Film Director

Guru Lounges are open to all emerging talent working in film. Tickets are £5 each.

Limited capacity. Please book early to avoid disappointment.

Guru Lounge: Sunday Sessions -Chai and Chat

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

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LIFF is pleased to present an afternoon of chai and chat. In the first of these sessions, we welcome the following people to talk briefly about their experience working in film and media from a range of disciplines including directing, producing, acting to more behind the scenes activities that help get films out into the world.

Director – Hammad Khan – ANIMA STATE, SLACKISTAN 
Director – Amit Biswas – THE BRIDGE
Director – Sarmad Masud – MY PURE LAND
Producer – Paromita Banerjee – THE BRIDGE
Producer – Uzma Hasan –  THE INFIDEL, FIRST BORN, LONDONSTANI
Actor – Waleed Akhtar – NIGHT BUS, THREE GIRLS
Agent – Nish Panchal – Curtis Brown

Following their introductions, there’ll be a short, sharp Q&A session for participants to gain further insights as we flow into an informal chat over chai and build what we hope will be a new network of people from South Asian backgrounds working in film today.

Guru Lounges are free events open to all for emerging talent working in film. To reserve your place please click HERE.

Limited capacity. Please book early to avoid disappointment.

Supported by:

Guru Lounge: Sunday Sessions - Getting Your Film Into Festivals

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

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The whole world is a festival. For first and second-time filmmakers finding the right place to launch your film can be very difficult. There are so many festivals for so many different types of films that it’s difficult to know where to start. LIFF is pleased to welcome a panel of festival directors who all actively support new talent.

Tricia Tuttle – The BFI London Film Festival
Sangeeta Datta – Director – Bird of Dusk  
Cary Sawhney – Director – London Indian Film Festival
Wendy Mitchell – International Programme Manager – British Council
Philip Ilson – Artistic Director – London Short Film Festival

The panel will discuss the finer points of how they find new films and work to support talent to get their films out to the audiences they deserve. Whether you’re a short film maker or working on your latest feature…if you want to gain valuable insights into how to to get your film out there.. this is an event not to be missed.

Guru Lounges are free events open to all for emerging talent working in film. To reserve your place please click HERE.

Limited capacity. Please book early to avoid disappointment.

Guru Lounge: THE HUNGRY - UK/INDIA Co-Production Case Study

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

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The festival encourages ground-breaking debate and will be organising talks aimed at industry professionals during the festival. GURU LOUNGE presents an invaluable guide to the ever-burgeoning Indian and South Asian film industries. A must for film industry professionals interested in co-production, acting in or shooting their next project in India.

A fascinating spotlight on Bornila Chatterjee’s THE HUNGRY, a contemporary reworking of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, here morphed into a New Delhi revenge thriller.  Cast includes Naseerudin Shah (Monsoon Wedding, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) Tisca Chopra (Qissa: Tale of a Lonely Ghost), Arjun Gupta (Nurse Jackie) Antonio Aakeel (City Of Tiny Lights).  Key players from the film, Film London and Cinestaan Film Company come together to talk about this unique collaboration.

Speakers:

• Adrian Wootton (CEO Film London)
• Deborah Sathe (Cinestaan Film Company)
• Kurban Kassam (Producer and co-writer The Hungry).
• Antonio Aakeel (Actor, The Hungry)

Chair: Lee Stone (Lee and Thompson)

FREE EVENT but prior booking for these sessions is essential – please contact Satwant Gill: info@londonindianfilmfestival.co.uk

Blue Room, BFI Southbank, Wednesday 28th June, 10.00-11.00 am

Guru Lounge: Virtual Reality from Mumbai to London

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

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The festival encourages ground-breaking debate and will be organising talks aimed at industry professionals during the festival. GURU LOUNGE presents an invaluable guide to the ever-burgeoning Indian and South Asian film industries. A must for film industry professionals interested in co-production, acting in or shooting their next project in India.

Dive into the world of VR filmmaking, with experts from Mumbai and London, convening at the BFI South Bank to discuss their experience shooting, editing and financing Virtual Reality content. Moving beyond its initial “fad” phase, VR is heading towards mass adoption. Filmmakers are experimenting with new techniques, telling stories and creating experiences in new ways. We are living in a period of cinematic innovation perhaps not seen since the early experiments which led through the films of Georges Méliès and Raja Harishchandra through to the grammatical innovations of Serge Eisenstein and Orson Welles.

To accompany its first showcase of Indian and British Asian VR films, LIFF hosts a panel of leading filmmaker from India and the UK. The panel will discuss their work using immersive 360 degree storytelling to drive awareness and change perceptions around themes such as global warming, human trafficking, women’s rights and caste protests. The panel will also discuss the potential of full interactive VR to create new ways of telling stories.

Speakers:

• Mark Atkins (Director, Crossover Labs, London) (Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel VR)
• Anand Gandhi (Founder, Memesys Studios, Mumbai) (Ship of Theseus, Proposition for a Revolution)
• Jayisha Patel (Writer-Director, London) (Notes to My Father VR)
• Sairam Sagiraju (Meraki Studios, Mumbai) (Winds of Samsara)
• Resh Sidhu (Framestore, London-New York) (Fantastic Beasts VR)

Chair: Chris Hainsworth

FREE EVENT but prior booking for these sessions is essential – please contact Satwant Gill: info@londonindianfilmfestival.co.uk

Blue Room, BFI Southbank, Monday 26th June, 10.00-11.00 am

Halkaa (Relief)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Nila Madhab Panda

Starring: Tathastu, Ranvir Shorey, Paoli Dam
Run time: 114 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2018
Language: Hindi with English subtitles
 | Country: India

This lovely family film that addresses social issues in a light-hearted manner follows Pichku, a boy growing up in one of Delhi’s oldest slums, who fights against having to defecate in the open. After failing to convince his family and others to build a toilet, Pichku and his friend Gopi make it their mission to try and get one built. This is the ultimate feel good film that is both charming and heart warming. Winner of the Grand Prix at the Montreal Film Festival, the film also boasts of a terrific soundtrack by virtuoso Bollywood composers Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

Hank and Asha

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: James E. Duff
Starring: Andrew Pastides, Mahira Kakkar
Run time: 73 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2013
Language: English | Country: USA

YEAR ROUND PROGRAMME

Winner of the Slamdance Audience Award, this tender delight of a movie tells of the courtship of two loveable young strangers searching for connection in an online world. Adorable Indian, Asha, is studying in Prague, where she watches a film by an American, called Hank, which she adores, but misses him at the post screening Q&A, so she takes a risk and sends him a video blog. To her surprise handsome Hank responds with a video blog from his home in New York. Very quickly the two bond and are soon communicating regularly and before they know it, they plan their first actual date in Paris, but one of them has held back a secret.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

Hank and Asha | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: James E. Duff
Starring: Andrew Pastides, Mahira Kakkar.
Run time: 73 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2013
Language: English | Country: USA

Winner of the Slamdance Audience Award, this tender delight of a movie tells of the courtship of two loveable young strangers searching for connection in an online world. Adorable Indian, Asha, is studying in Prague, where she watches a film by an American, called Hank, which she adores, but misses him at the post screening Q&A, so she takes a risk and sends him a video blog. To her surprise handsome Hank responds with a video blog from his home in New York. Very quickly the two bond and are soon communicating regularly and before they know it, they plan their first actual date in Paris, but one of them has held back a secret.

Haraamkhor (The Wretched) | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Shlok Sharma
Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Shweta Tripathi, Trimala Adhikari.
Run time: 92 mins | Certificate: 15 |
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

From the people who brought you worldwide critical and commercial success The Lunchbox, comes this riveting tale of forbidden love. In a dusty town in Gujarat, while a nation rumbling towards economic progress churns away in the background, a school and its inmates are thrown into sharp relief. A married schoolteacher develops more than an academic interest in one of his comely students and the feeling is mutual. It doesn’t help that the girl’s father is a high-ranking police officer. Debutant director Shlok Sharma who has assisted Indian indie Godfather Anurag Kashyap on Dev D and Gangs of Wasseypur in the past, ratchets up the tension, resulting in a mesmerising journey that ends in a searing, soaring, emotional finale. As usual, indie king Nawazuddin Siddiqui delivers a command performance, matched turn for turn by the fresh faced Shweta Tripathi.

Hati Bondhu: Friends of Elephants

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Kripal Kalita

Run time: 51 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2022
Language: English partly Assamese with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: SAVE THE PLANET

With destruction of Elephant’s forests in Assam and the expansion of the human population, human-elephant conflict has increased massively resulting in mortalities on both sides. This inspiring and informative documentary showcases the efforts of the non-profit organisation ‘Hati Bondhu’ to save the lives of these majestic, intelligent animals, and help the farmers’ rice harvest prosper, stopping the conflict between the two.

Contains some scenes of animal cruelty which may upset some viewers

Hemalkasa | World Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: Samruddhi Porey
Starring: Nana Patekar, Sonali Kulkarni, Mohan Agashe.
Run time: 117 mins | Certificate: U |
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

This inspirational biopic follows the selfless journey of Dr. Prakash Baba Amte and his wife Dr. Mandakini Amte, a couple who dedicated their lives to a project for the development of tribal people of Maharashtra, India, in the toughest of conditions with little or no support from the establishment. The project, located at Hemalkasa, eventually led to the formation of a free hospital, a free residential school and an orphanage for injured wild animals. For their pioneering efforts, the Amtes were accorded the prestigious Magsasay Award for Community Leadership. Nana Patekar and Sonali Kulkarni deliver the performance of their lives in this outstanding example of the best Indian independent cinema. Incredibly moving, the film will leave you with a tear in your eye, a fond smile on your lips and an immediate desire to improve the world that we live in.

If you would like to support the work at Hemalkasa please click here to find out more.

Hotel Salvation

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Shubhashish Bhutiani
Starring: Adil Hussain, Lalit Behl, Geetanjali Kulkarni
Run time: 99 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2016
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles | Country: India

In this gentle charmer, a 77-year-old father decides to end his days in the holy city of Varanasi and attain salvation, with his son accompanying him. Their journey is a shining example of how humour, warmth and humanity triump(h over pathos. The film won the UNESCO award at Venice  and the Critics Award at Vesoul, and showcases bravura performances from renowned actors Adil Hussain (Life of Pi), Lalit Behl (Titli) and Geetanjali Kulkarni (Court).

Hva vil folk si (What Will People Say)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Iram Haq

Starring: Maria Mozhdah, Adil Hussain, Rohit Saraf, Ali Arfan, Sheeba Chaddha
Run time: 106 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2017
Language: Norwegian, Urdu with English Subtitles | Country: Norway/Germany/Sweden

Director Iram Haq’s compelling tale has been collecting awards worldwide since its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. It tells of a young Pakistani teenager, Nisha whose happy-double-life in Norway is torn apart when her father discovers her with her white Norwegian boyfriend. Outraged and under pressure from the community, he sends her off to Pakistan to ‘learn how to behave properly.’ Trapped in a land she doesn’t know, with a hostile extended family who see her as a shameful westerner, Nisha is forced to make hard choices. Maria Mozhdah makes a powerful debut as Nisha with Adil Hussain as her troubled father.

The screening will be introduced by Shaista Gohir (Wednesday 27th June at Picturehouse Central)

Shaista Gohir is a leading women’s rights campaigner and Chair of the Muslim Women’s Network UK, a national charity, which also operates a national helpline which she set up.

I’ll Meet You There

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Iram Parveen Bilal
Starring: Faran Tahir, Nikita Tewani, Sheetal Sheth
Run time: 90 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2020
Language: English, Urdu with English subtitles | Country: USA

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

An insightful and moving portrait of three generations of a Muslim-American family, I’ll Meet You There follows Majeed, a Chicago policeman, and his teenage daughter Dua, a gifted ballet dancer. Their blissful life begins to take a turn after an unexpected visit from Baba, Majeed’s long-estranged, religious father from Pakistan, which coincides with his new undercover assignment with the FBI. As Baba and Dua’s relationship begins to blossom she is soon forced to pirouette between her passion for dance and her roots.

Online Q&A: Iram Parveen Bilal, cast and crew with BBC’s Haroon Rashid

Also streaming online on LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Ilai (Leaf) | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: Rajiv Reddy Pochareddy
Starring: Manjula Odanadi, Pritham Charavarthy, Mighty Gibson.
Run time: 67 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2013
Language: Tamil with English subtitles | Country: India

With great pathos, and a riveting narrative, Ilai (Leaf) encapsulates the stories of many thousands of Indians arriving in the big cities each year, in the hope of a better future, or sometimes just by chance. Often their only baggage is a troubled past. We are introduced to one such story, a lonely little girl from the countryside who accidentally finds herself in a bustling metropolis. The girl can’t speak the city’s language, or understand its high-speed ways. She wanders the mean streets to find shelter, but soon realises she must enlist the help of others, including a homeless old woman to ensure her survival.

Ilai (Leaf) is screening with a short film – FOREST MAN | Dir. William Douglas McMaster. A doc. based on the true story of a man who planted an Indian forest from scratch.

In Conversation With Asif Kapadia

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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IN CONVERSATION

Oscar, Grammy Award, BAFTA winning British filmmaker Asif Kapadia is one of the first British Asians to make huge waves in the world of cinema. His first feature film The Warrior was nominated for three BAFTA awards, winning two, including Outstanding British Film of the Year. The Warrior was the first international role for the late, great Irrfan Khan. Kapadia won accolades for his trilogy of documentaries Senna, Amy & Diego Maradona, showing an uncanny ability to take archive footage and tell compelling cinematic stories about key figures and the price of fame. Kapadia directed episodes of the series Mindhunter for David Fincher & Netflix, he executive produced the music series 1971: ‘The year that music changed everything’ and he co directed & executive produced the series The Me You Can’t See with Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry focusing on mental health and well being, both for AppleTV+. Watch him take a deep dive into his career on stage at The BFI Southbank, with acclaimed film critic Hanna Ines Flint.

In Conversation With Avtar Panesar

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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IN CONVERSATION

Behind the surface glamour of the film industry are the key industry professionals who dynamically make it all happen. We are delighted to celebrate and talk to one such British hero Avtar Panesar , who over the last thirty years has been a pioneer of the UK Asian Bollywood film & music scene and has gone on to be a leading light in one of India’s biggest hit movie studios – Yash Raj Films.

Avtar talks about his childhood, arrival from Punjab to London’s Southall in the 1970s and how his father’s strong immigrant work ethic inspired him. Starting as a stockroom assistant with EMI India he climbed to management within the company promoting Indian music. This soon took him into Hindi commercial cinema, where as a young man, his hard work and diligence caught the attention of movie moguls Yash and Aditya Chopra , who handpicked him to execute their vision to set up the company’s international operations.

As success followed, Avtar then ascended to greater heights moving back to India at Yash Raj Studios, Mumbai to be dynamically involved with this legendary company’s global expansion which now celebrates 50 years of movie-making.

Online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

In Conversation With Gurinder Chadha

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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IN CONVERSATION

Celebrating the iconic British BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated film Bend It Like Beckham at the 20th anniversary of it being in production, British Punjabi director Gurinder Chadha OBE, returns to the Festival to introduce this film at a unique open air screening at Rooftop East. Best known for her films like the BAFTA nominated Bhaji on the Beach, Bride and Prejudice, Viceroy’s House, and Blinded by the Light, Kenya born Chadha started her media career in radio, and then TV as a BBC news reporter, going on to direct award-winning documentaries for the British Film Institute, BBC and Channel Four. Empowered by vibrant British Bhangra music, she created a seminal documentary on British Asian identity, entitled I’m British, But… Gurinder is a patron of Women in Film and TV UK and has been part of many firsts for a British Asian woman in cinema. She has collaborated numerous times with the double Oscar and double Grammy winner, AR Rahman, for the music that has adorned her films.

In conversation with BBC presenters Sunny & Shay.

In Conversation With Hanif Kureishi

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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IN CONVERSATION

One of Britain’s best known screenwriters, Hanif Kureshi CBE is of mixed Pakistani and English origin. He earned his degree in Philosophy at King’s College London. He went on to write plays for the Hampstead Theatre, and by the age of 18, was with the Royal Court. He wrote My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, a screenplay about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980s London for a cult film directed by Stephen Frears, which won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Kureishi’s drama The Mother was adapted into a movie by Roger Michell, which won a joint First Prize in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival. The television miniseries, based on the novel The Buddha of Suburbia, and film My Son the Fanatic based on his own short story of the same title garnered him recognition as an astute story teller. See him in a live Q&A on stage at the BFI Southbank, with the screening of My Beautiful Laundrette.

Image credit: Kier Kureishi

In Conversation With Janhvi Kapoor

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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IN CONVERSATION

Born to the late legendary  pan Indian actress Sridevi and Bollywood producer Boney Kapoor, Janhvi Kapoor has made her mark on Hindi cinema since her first foray onto the cinematic screen in 2018 with Dhadak. She took her early training at the popular Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in California. She went on to win accolades for her role in the Zoya Akhtar directed Story 1 segment as part of the Netflix anthology, Ghost Stories. Her titular role in Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl went on to win plaudits for her understated performance and physical transformation, playing one of India’s first female air force officers.  An actress for the modern age, with many films in the streaming sphere, Kapoor discusses her short but steady journey in cinema, with film critic Mike McCahill of The Guardian, Reader’s Digest and The Telegraph on www.loveliffathome.com

Online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

Image credit: House of Pixels

In Conversation With Karan Johar

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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IN CONVERSATION

The son of Bollywood producer Yash Johar of Dharma Productions, Karan Johar followed in his father’s illustrious footsteps without missing a beat, ably aided by his mother, Hiroo Johar. Starting his career as an actor, he went on to create what is seen as the epitome of Bollywood cinema, working with lavish opulent sets, and working with the biggest names in the business. His foray into cinema came via his role as an assistant director on cousin Aditya Chopra’s super hit film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, where he formed his close working relationship with Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, creating his directorial debut, the multiple award winning Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. His work with Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham… starring Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan followed to great success. He has since produced, worked with, and launched many newcomers in cinema. He speaks to Girls On Film & BBC’s Anna Smith about his incredible career.

Online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

In Conversation With Pam Cullen

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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IN CONVERSATION

Pam Cullen at 97 years young, is a true legend, with an incredible career spanning over fifty years in the Indian film industry. In this very rare, frank and at times witty Interview Pam talks to author and producer Nasreen Munni Kabir about her unique life and work. It starts in the 1940s, rebelling against her conservative English parents to join the ‘Free India’ movement and becoming involved with the nascent Indian High Commission and then the early National Film Development Corporation of India. Pam recounts her career experiences with the Indian independence leader V.K.Krishna Menon, setting up the UK’s first Indian film screening after WW2. She later worked with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and befriended the shy young Satyajit Ray on his early visits to London, rubbing shoulders with such luminaries as Charlie Chaplin and managing Raj Kapoor’s press schedule in the golden age of cinema.

Online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

In Conversation With Shruti Haasan

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

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IN CONVERSATION

Pan Indian actress and musician Shruti Haasan, was born to actors Kamal Haasan and Sarika Thakur, living her life around set visits, cameos, and ultimately a career in cinema. From acting in the acclaimed film exploring Gandhian principles, Hey Ram, as a child, to composing the score for Unnaipol Oruvan (Tamil remake of the Hindi film A Wednesday) to making her mark in films like 3 and D-Day, she has won Filmfare, IIFA and SIIMA awards for her silverscreen appearances. Her foray into Hollywood came by way of the series of the action drama series Treadstone. Her work as a playback singer in Indian cinema began with her first song aged six in Thevar Magan alongside thespian Sivaji Ganesan, by the legend Ilaiyaraaja. She discusses her career trajectory with BBC broadcaster and film critic Ashanti Omkar, in a candid In Conversation event on www.loveliffathome.com

Online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

International Conference 2011

LIFF Festival Screening: 2011

Starring: International keynote speakers and masterclasses with Rituparno Ghosh and Anurag Kashyap.
| Year: 2011

What’s New? The Changing Face of Indian Cinema: Contemporary and Historical Contexts

The University of Westminster’s India Media Centre, in association with LIFF, will be hosting a special conference on the challenges that the burgeoning new Indian cinema poses to mainstream filmmaking. Filmmakers that toy with, or eschew, the conventions of the familiar multi-genre, song and dance extravaganzas are appearing across Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and beyond. What do their films mean for the future of Indian cinema and the global aspirations of India’s urban ‘multiplex’ generation? Conference includes international keynote speakers, over forty papers from scholars around the world, and masterclasses with Rituparno Ghosh and Anurag Kashyap.

Irrfan Khan in Conversation

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

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A graduate of India’s National School of Drama, Irrfan Khan had a quiet beginning in Indian television and arthouse features, arriving on the international scene in Asif Kapadia’s 2001 BAFTA-winning The Warrior. Notable performances include The Darjeeling Limited, Slumdog Millionaire, A Mighty Heart, Vishal Bharadwaj’s Macbeth adaptation Maqbool, Life of Pi and The Amazing Spiderman, and the HBO series In Treatment; he also won India’s National Award for Best Actor for playing an athlete turned bandit in Tigmanshu Dhulia’s 2010 Paan Singh Tomar.

Khan will share his experiences in the British, Hollywood and Indian film industries with director Asif Kapadia.

BFI SOUTHBANK

Island City

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Ruchika Oberoi
Starring: Vinay Pathak, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Chandan Roy Sanyal.
Run time: 111 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2015
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Winner of the best directing debut at the Venice Film Festival, the film tells three stories. In the first one, a drone employee at a soulless corporation wins an office competition entitling him to a whole day of fun at the mall. However, he doesn’t have much fun at all. The second story follows a domineering head of a family who suffers a stroke and is on life support. His newly-liberated family buy a TV and are hooked on to a popular soap when they learn to their dismay that the family head is on the road to recovery. And in the last story, a woman who is leading a mechanical existence blossoms when she gets a series of anonymous love letters. These stories explore the different facets of life and society in the maddening city of Mumbai.

Iti, Tomari Dhaka (Sincerely Yours, Dhaka)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Various

Run time: 90 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2018
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: Bangladesh

Strand: BENGAL TIGERS

Seven Bangladeshi filmmakers come together to present a series of short stories as a love-letter to their beloved city of Dhaka. A background actor who’ll do anything to be a star; two young girls who are dying for a drink in a city where alcohol is illegal; a bank scam sparks an attempted murder and a plumber adds fuel to a refugee crisis. Ranging from the bizarre, comical and heart-warming to the heartbreaking, the first ever anthology film made in Bangladesh takes us on a bittersweet yet wild journey through the city of Dhaka.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Jalaler Golpo (Jalal’s Story)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Abu Shahed Emon
Starring: Mohammod Emon, Arafat Rahman, Mosharraf Karim.
Run time: 121 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2014
Language: Bangla with English subtitles | Country: Bangladesh

PLAY TRAILER >

This entrancing film follows three chapters in the life of an infant, a child and teen named Jalal. Abandoned as a baby in the river, he is rescued and raised by Miraj. After a series of misfortunes, the villagers consider the baby to be a curse on their village and Miraj has to abandon the baby back in the river. Karim, a landowner, is bringing up Jalal, now nine. Bizarrely, Jalal is considered the cause of Karim’s wife’s infertility and he is cast back into the river. The 19-year-old Jalal now works for a gang leader and aspiring politician Sajib. This time, a different baby is to be thrown into the river, ahead of the upcoming elections, thanks to Sajib’s nefarious antics. Abu Shahed Emon tackles several social issues in Bangladesh including superstition, politically motivated corruption and women’s rights.

Jalsaghar (The Music Room)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Satyajit Ray
Starring: Chhabi Biswas, Sardar Akhtar, Gangapadu basu
Run time: 99 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 1958
Language: Bengali with English Subtitles | Country: India

Strand: BENGAL TIGERS

Satyajit Ray brilliantly evokes the crumbling opulence of the world of a fallen aristocrat, Roy (the beloved stage and screen actor Chhabi Biswas) desperately clinging to a fading way of life in his zamindar’s palace. His greatest joy, and his obsession, is the music room in which he has hosted lavish concerts over the years—now a shadow of its former vivid self. The music itself, and its performance, to which Roy is so passionately if insensately devoted, becomes a key character in the film. The Music Room is a showcase for some of India’s most popular musicians of the day. The Music Room was a showcase for some of India’s most popular musicians, and was voted one of the greatest films of all time by Sight and Sound.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

New digitally restored version

Jeewan Hathi (Elephant in The Room) | World Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Meenu Gaur, Farjad Nabi
Starring: Naseeruddin Shah, Hina Dilpazeer, Samiya Mumtaz.
Run time: 60 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2016
Language: Urdu with English subtitles | Country: Pakistan/India

PLAY TRAILER >

ZEAL FOR UNITY PRESENTS PAKISTAN DOUBLE BILL :

Made under the Zeal for Unity India-Pakistan filmmaking initiative, these films explore different facets of life in Pakistan. In Khaemae Mein Matt Jhankain, life in a remote village becomes exciting when a travelling circus pitches up in town. The men and boys of the village cannot get enough of the ravishingly beautiful trapeze artist and visit every night to catch a glimpse of her. But, there is a secret. Acclaimed Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah headlines Jeewan Hathi as a channel owner who will do anything for higher ratings. This riotously funny satire on Pakistan’s media industry explores the dark underbelly of a reality show that has the nation enthralled.

Jodhaa Akbar

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Starring: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai
Run time: 213 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2008
Language: Hindi and Urdu with English Subtitles | Country: India

A rare chance to see this 16th Century epic love story as it was intended: on the big screen. Co-written and directed by Gowariker, it tells of a marriage of alliance that gave birth to true love between a great Mughal emperor, Akbar, and a Hindu Rajput princess, Jodhaa, who in this film at least is handy with a sword. The film is visually magnificent, a bejewelled extravaganza that features smouldering performances from Aishwaraya Rai and Hrithik Roshan and breathtaking horizon filling battle sequences.

Josh (Against the Grain)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Iram Parveen Bilal
Starring: Aamina Sheikh, Mohib Mirza, Khalid Malik, Naveen Waqar, Ali Rizvi.
Run time: 104 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2013
Language: Urdu / English with English subtitles | Country: Pakistan, USA

The life of a high society school teacher is shattered when her beloved nanny inexplicably disappears. Josh is the story of the schoolteacher’s search for a dangerous truth in the nanny’s feudal village. This empowering film is LIFF’s first ever selection from Pakistan and stars Urdu cinema superstars Aamina Sheikh and Mohib Mirza. Josh tackles the themes of class separation, feudalism, poverty, individual empowerment and women’s rights head on and takes no prisoners en route. And in Iram Parveen Bilal, Pakistan and world cinema welcomes a bold new voice and a powerful storyteller. Not to be missed!

Jugni (Firefly) | International Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Shefali Bhushan
Starring: Sugandha Garg, Siddhant Behl, Sadhana Singh
Run time: 115 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2016
Language: Hindi / Punjabi with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

Travelling through the verdant fields of Punjab, Vibhavari (Vibs) is a gorgeous, young composer from Mumbai. She is in search of Bibi Saroop, the voice that she believes will be the saviour of her new score. She bumps into Bibi’s dashing son Mastana who has a stunning voice. Vibs records Mastana’s renditions of Punjabi folk songs and the duo soon fall for each other. Vibs returns to a soured relationship with her boyfriend in Mumbai. Mastana is left brokenhearted, but his voice is indeed the magical ingredient of the score, which becomes an instant hit. When Vibs calls Mastana to the big city he is full of hope, but they are forced to make tough choices between their careers and their hearts.

Kalira Atita (Yesterday's Past)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Nila Madhab Panda
Starring: Pitabash Tripathy
Run time: 83 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2020
Language: Odia with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: SAVE THE PLANET

Acclaimed Director Nila Madhab Panda’s powerful new tale is set against a tableaux of rapidly evolving climate change. Gunu, a young man, is frantically trying to reunite with his missing family days before a predicted super cyclone. As coastal villages are being evacuated Gunu heads in the wrong direction towards his isolated home by the ocean, to find what he has lost. Gunu’s challenging survival on the abandoned coast, his very existence and struggle to survive the fury of nature makes his journey a poetic portrayal of emotional trauma and human triumph.

Online Q&A with Nila Madhab Panda

Kalo Pothi (The Black Hen)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Min Bahadur Bham
Starring: Khadka Raj Nepali, Sukra Raj Rokaya, Jit Bahadur Malla.
Run time: 90 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2015
Language: Nepali with English subtitles | Country: Nepal

PLAY TRAILER >

LIFF’s first Nepali screening is directed by new hot-property director Min Bahadur Bham and has been delighting audiences around Europe. In 2001, in a remote Nepalese village, we find Prakash and Kiran, two 12-year-olds, who despite belonging to different castes, are inseparable best mates. They decide on a plan to raise a hen to earn some money by selling its eggs. Their new business venture seems to be working, but as times get hard, Prakash’s father sells off all his chickens including the boy’s hen. Prakash and Kiran find out that their hen has been sold to an old man many villages away and set out on an adventure to liberate their prized fowl. However, in their single-minded obsession, the youngsters are oblivious to the growing civil war brewing in the region and they soon find themselves travelling through some very dangerous territory, where their friendship will be put to the test.

Kanasemba Kudureyaneri (Riding the Stallion of a Dream)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2011

Director: Girish Kasaravalli
Starring: Vyjanath Biradar, Umashri, Sadashiv Brahmavar
Run time: 109 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2010
Language: Kannada | Country: India

The latest feature from Girish Kasaravalli, one of the founding fathers of India’s parallel cinema movement, is also his most unconventional, employing for the first time in his long and distinguished career a non-linear, fragmented narrative.

This delightful evocation of pastoral life in the southern Indian state of Karnataka follows a couple, Irya and Rudri, who are desperately poor but extremely happy. Irya is the butt of village jokes, as he is a professional gravedigger, and sits around waiting for people to die while the hardworking Rudri barely makes ends meet by working on a farm.

Their lives are thrown into turmoil when Irya dreams of the village headman’s death and the appearance of nomad Siddha, who will ensure the passage of souls direct to heaven if his arrival coincides with the time of death. Kasaravalli masterfully weaves together a jigsaw of a narrative that is deeply satisfying.

The film won India’s National Film Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Film Feature Film in Kannada.

Kanyaka Talkies (Virgin Talkies) | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: K.R. Manoj
Starring: Murali Gopy, Lena Kumar, Indrans, Manianpilla Raju.
Run time: 115 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2013
Language: Malayalam with English subtitles | Country: India

A gripping tale is woven around Kanyaka Talkies, a twenty-year-old movie theatre in a sleepy Kerala village, where the mainstay was the screening of softporn. The theatre owner moves away and leaves the theatre to the parish, which decides to convert it into a church. The priest who comes to the village to spread the word of the Lord is haunted by a woman’s voice. Whose voice is it? Is it the voice of the countless heroines from C grade movies, which were previously screened in the cinema? The priest is slowly driven crazy and suffers a crisis of faith. Adding to the mix is a woman who leads the double life of a home nurse and a porn star. The film deftly weaves themes of body, desire, guilt and forbidden pleasures into its racy and spellbinding narrative. Unmissable!

Karkhanisanchi Waari (Ashes on a Road Trip)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Mangesh Joshi
Starring: Amey Wagh, Mohan Agashe, Geetanjali Kulkarni
Run time: 108 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2020
Language: Marathi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

This black comedy road-movie starts as the dominant patriarch of the Karkhanis family passes away. His dysfunctional, aging siblings and his son cram into a Maruti van, leaving the city and heading to their distant homeland village, to scatter his ashes as per his final wish. The trip becomes unexpectedly adventurous as on the way scandalous secrets are revealed, forcing them all to face smoldering interpersonal conflicts that hilariously threaten to throw the journey off course.

Online Q&A with cast and crew

Kastoori (The Musk)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Vinod Kamble
Starring: Samarth Sonawane, Shravan upalakar, Vaishali kendale
Run time: 101 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2019
Language: Hindi, Marathi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: Young Rebel

Vinod Kamble’s movie tells of Gopi, an intelligent Dalit teenager, who has no choice but to engage in manual scavenging in order to pay for his education. He is teased at school for the smell of his body and clothes, with his classmates covering their noses when he walks past, never shy of reminding him that he “smells like a gutter”. Gopi comes across the scent of a perfume called kastoori (the musk), and sees this as the way to get rid of his smell. Together with his friend Adim, they set off on a mission to get their hands on the precious scent.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Online Q&A with Vinod Kamble

Kattumaram (Catamaran)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Swarnavel Eswaran
Starring: Mysskin, Preeti Karan, Anusha Prabhu
Run time: 73 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2018
Language: Tamil with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

Part of an emerging queer cinema from South India Kattumaram tells of patriarch Singaram and his orphaned niece Anandhi, fisher-folk survivors of the Tsunami. Beautiful Anandhi teaches in the local school and has many fishermen interested in her, but Anandhi instead secretly falls for a new female supply teacher. As Singaram finds out and tries to come to terms with this revelation, gossip about the young women’s relationship quickly spreads. Singaram is left facing the choice of either defending his beloved niece and her partner, or giving sway to the demands of an angry community.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Q&A with director Swarnavel Eswaran, actor Mysskin & other cast

Kayattam (A’hr)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Sanal Kumar Sasidharan
Starring: Manju Warrier, Gaurav Ravindran, Bhupendra Khurana
Run time: 105 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2020
Language: Malayalam with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

Kerala’s Enfant terrible director Sanal Kumar Sasidharan (Sexy Durga), returns to the festival with this new twisted Himalayan tale. Maya from Kerala connects with younger Akash on social media and they meet in person on a mountain trek. Their chemistry is instant and romance blossoms, however this budding union attracts the unwanted attention of several older male fellow travellers and threatens to derail their relationship.

Online Q&A: Sanal Kumar Sasidharan and Manju Warrier with BBC’s Ashanti Omkar

Khaemae Mein Matt Jhankain (Don't Peek into the Tent) | World Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Shahbaz Sumar
Starring: Sara Haider, Zia Khan, Mahtab Murad.
Run time: 45 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2016
Language: Punjabi / Urdu with English subtitles | Country: Pakistan/India

PLAY TRAILER >

ZEAL FOR UNITY PRESENTS PAKISTAN DOUBLE BILL :

Made under the Zeal for Unity India-Pakistan filmmaking initiative, these films explore different facets of life in Pakistan. In Khaemae Mein Matt Jhankain, life in a remote village becomes exciting when a travelling circus pitches up in town. The men and boys of the village cannot get enough of the ravishingly beautiful trapeze artist and visit every night to catch a glimpse of her. But, there is a secret. Acclaimed Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah headlines Jeewan Hathi as a channel owner who will do anything for higher ratings. This riotously funny satire on Pakistan’s media industry explores the dark underbelly of a reality show that has the nation enthralled.

Khandhar (Ruins)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Mrinal Sen
Starring: Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Annu Kapoor, Pankaj Kapur
Run time: 106 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 1984
Language: Hindi, English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

Legendary director Mrinal Sen passed in December 2018. We mark his legacy with a special screening of the restored film Khandhar. The film won India’s National film award for Best Direction, Best Actress and Best Editing and won awards worldwide. In this magnificent character ensemble a once wealthy landowner Dipu (Pankaj Kapur) invites his friends Subhash (Naseeruddin Shah) and Anil (Annu Kapoor) to his broken-down ancestral home in the country, where they meet the impoverished caretaker and his family including the intelligent dutiful daughter Jamini (Shabana Azmi) who was jilted by her ex-lover. Young Jamini and Subhash form an understated but intense attraction, where the silences say more than words.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Special Guest Introduction

Kho Ki Pa Lu (Up Down & Sideways)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Anushka Meenakshi, Iswar Srikumar

Run time: 83 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2017
Language: Chokri with English Subtitles | Country: India

Close to the India-Myanmar border is the village of Phek in Nagaland.  Nearly all of its 5,000 inhabitants grow rice for their own consumption. As they work in the fields the men and women sing together and as the seasons change so does the music, becoming increasingly hypnotic. The songs have been passed down for generations and tell stories of the land, love and the concerns of everyday life in an area that for many years has been troubled by political unrest. Up Down & Sideways is a stunningly beautiful ethnographic portrait of a community of rice cultivators and their memories of love and loss created from working together on the fields. 

Khwada (Obstacle) | International Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Bhaurao Karhade
Starring: Shashank Shende, Anil Nagarkar, Bhau Shinde.
Run time: 116 mins | Certificate: 15 |
Language: Marathi with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

A hot new title from the burgeoning Marathi independent film scene, Khwada is a gritty drama about a dispossessed shepherd family moving from village to village trying to find fodder for their herd in the famine hit state of Maharashtra. The younger shepherds, looking for love and brighter prospects, come into contact and clash with corrupt local landlords and trouble soon escalates into sheep rustling and bloodshed. This fascinating film lays bare the stark experiences faced by the rural poor in India while, with a twinkle in its eye, it celebrates the sweeping beauty of the Marathi rural landscape. India has been quick to recognise its merit, awarding it with a special jury prize at the country’s annual National Awards.

Konkona Sen Sharma In Conversation

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

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Strand: IN CONVERSATION

One of Bengal’s favourite and multi-award winning actors Konkona made her debut acting role as a child artist in Indira (1983). She won a National Award for Best Actress for her role in Aparna Sen’s critically successful Mr & Mrs Iyer in 2002. Her role in the nationally acclaimed Page 3 took her to wider audiences, with an award winning role in the hit Shakespearean adaptation by Vishal Bhardwaj; Omkara to follow. Her next films won numerous Filmfare and national awards. Konkona’s directorial debut Death In The Gunj (2016), a 1970s period drama was screened at festivals globally and utilised Konkona’s strength of telling enemseble character driven stories. Konkona is an eloquent speaker on mental health and wellbeing and gender politics, based on her own lived experiences.

KINDLY SUPPORTED BY THE BAGRI FOUNDATION

Koozhangal (Pebbles)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: P.S Vinothraj
Starring: Chellapandi, Karuththadaiyaan
Run time: 75 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2021
Language: Tamil with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

Winner of the prestigious Tiger Award at this year’s International Film Festival of Rotterdam, Koozhangal tells of Ganapathy, a wiry, chain smoking drunk, who discovers his wife has fled their poor village home. Ganapathy drags his young son out of school and they set off on a furious journey together across the arid and desolate landscape of Tamil Nadu to find his wife. P.S Vinothraj’s majestic debut feature beautifully tells the tale of a troubled father-son relationship and explores the deeper mores of male powerplay.

Online Q&A with P.S.Vinothraj and Vignesh Shivan

Kutrame Thandanai (Crime is Punishment)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: M. Manikandan
Starring: Vidharth, Nasser, Rahman, Pooja Devariya, Aishwarya Rajesh
Run time: 98 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2016
Language: Tamil with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

Tamil Naidu’s hottest young filmmaker M.Manikandan returns to the festival after last year’s hit Kaakkaa Muttai (Crow’s Egg), with a stylish, twisted plot thriller. Mild-mannered, hard-working bachelor, Ravi has tunnel vision and is on the brink of blindness. With little in the bank, he can’t raise money for an eye transplant. He lives in a cheek-by-jowl tenement block and every day watches a young female neighbour below as she greets her male visitors. One day the police call on Ravi. The woman has been mysteriously murdered. Ravi says he saw the last two culprits, but as he is called in to testify in court, the wealthy murder culprits’ go-betweens try to bribe Ravi to refute his claim. Ravi sees a last ditched opportunity to make some money and save his sight. He embarks on the dangerous journey into corruption, where he is soon also in danger of becoming the murder suspect.

Ladies Only

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Rebana Liz John

Run time: 79 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2021
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: Germany, India

Strand: WOMEN MAKE MOVIES

‘What makes you angry?’ a filmmaker asks a woman traveller in the ‘Ladies Only’ compartments of Mumbai local trains running in and out of the main stations. The answers to this and many other questions are both insightful and surprising, highlighting the issues, hopes and struggles of womanhood in India today, especially in the face of the frenetic non-stop Mumbai lifestyle. The changing light, faces and languages creates a poetic rhythm flowing through this engrossing and must-see documentary.

Supported by Integrity International

Q&A with Rebana Liz John

Ladli Laila (Virgin Goat)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2011

Director: Murali Nair
Starring: Raghubir Yadav, Shiela Naidu, Saurab Gharipurikar, Purnima Maudgil
Run time: 87 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2009
Language: Hindi | Country: India

Murali Nair is one of India’s most celebrated young directors, having won the prestigious Camera D’Or at Cannes for his first feature Marana Simhasanam (Throne of Death ), a surreal and hysterically funny commentary on local Indian politics.

His latest feature continues in the same vein. Raghubir Yadav, the doyen of Indian indie actors, plays Kalyan Singh, a farmer who is trying to eke out a living. Singh loves his pet she-goat Laila even more than he does his own family. Singh’s ambition is that his pet will have a kid.

The search is on for a Billy Goat that needs to be found whilst Laila is still in heat. The announcement that a local bigwig is to visit town throws a spoke into Singh’s mating plans for his beloved goat. Nair’s satire takes numerous snipes at corruption in its myriad forms but in a hilarious and warm-hearted manner.

Lady of The Lake

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Haobam Paban Kumar
Starring: Ningthoujam Sanatomba, Sagolsam Thambalsang
Run time: 71 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2016
Language: Manipuri with English Subtitles | Country: India

A fishing community in the northeastern state of Manipur ekes out a humble livelihood on a floating village in the middle of a lake. When the local government attempts to demolish the unique settlement, one villager buys a gun to defend his home. Award-winning director Kumar conjures up an eerie sense of calm about to be disrupted forever.

Last Chance Mumbai (Ek Tho Chance)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2010

Director: Saeed Akhtar Mirza
Starring: Vijay Raaz , Purab Kohli, Rajat Kapoor
Run time: 120 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2009
Language: Hindi | Country: India

‘Monsoon Wedding’ actor Vijay Raaz leads an impressive cast of characters in this multi-strand ensemble, set in the megalopolis of modern Mumbai. Acclaimed Director Saeed Akhtar Mirza explores the connected lives of the city’s varied inhabitants over the same 24 hour period: from street kids struggling to live; a self indulgent millionaire playboy, who gets whatever girl he wants; to a sleek night thief (Raaz), who inadvertently steals from the wrong car, crossing a corrupt politician. He begins a police hunt that will bring all our characters head on, towards a spectacular road-crash finale.

Legal and Tax Surgeries

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

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Lee Stone (Lee & Thompson LLP) will hold a series of individual, 20 minute, Legal and Tax surgeries to discuss your film project. Sign up and come prepared!

Lee Stone is a partner in the Film Group of the leading UK entertainment law firm, Lee & Thompson LLP. He has been instrumental in developing the firm’s expertise in advising the Indian film industry and is widely recognised as the go-to-lawyer for Indian film producers, financiers and distributors wanting to do business in the UK, as a result of which Lee is also regularly instructed by British companies wanting to collaborate with entities from within the Indian film industry.

FREE EVENT but prior booking for these sessions is essential – please contact Satwant Gill: info@londonindianfilmfestival.co.uk

Lee & Thompson Offices, Tuesday 27th June, 9.30-11.00 am

Life in Pictures: Adoor Gopalakrishnan Masterclass

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

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Only two filmmakers from India have won the BFI’s Sutherland Trophy – Satyajit Ray and Adoor Gopalakrishnan for his film Elippathayam in 1982. With this rare visit to London, legendary South Indian filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan will speak about his internationally successful career. Leaving his government job to study at the National Film Institute of India, Pune in 1962, he pioneered the first film society in Kerala and set up a co-operative aimed at the production, distribution and exhibition of films. Kerala has remained his base and cultural inspiration. With 11 feature films and over 30 documentaries and shorts, Gopalakrishnan’s accolades include India’s highest civilian award the Padma Vibhushan in 2006, for his contribution to the arts.

Hosted by Derek Malcolm.

BFI SOUTHBANK

Life is Good

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Ananth Mahadevan
Starring: Jackie Shroff, Rajit Kapoor, Sunita Sen Gupta, Ankita Shrivastava, Ananya Vij, Sania Anklesaria.
Run time: 98 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2012
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

A warm-hearted tale of a the unlikely friendship between lonely Rameshwar, a middle aged post office worker (Jackie Shroff), who is plunged into depression after the death of his mother and a 6 year old school girl Mishti, who moves in next door with her single mum. Unstoppable Mishti from day one decides that reserved Rameshwar will be her new buddy. She slowly lifts his spirits and soon changes his outlook on everything. Rameshwar witnesses the girl grow up, but struggles with the realisation that his best friend and almost daughter will one day also leave him. A great cast led by Bollywood star Jackie Shroff offer emotionally charged performances.

Little English

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Pravesh Kumar
Starring: Rameet Rauli, Viraj Juneja, Seema Bowri, Goldy Notay, Ameet Chana, Nikki Patel, Simon Rivers, Shereener Browne and Madhav Sharma. Featuring Sanjeev Kohli, Andy Kumar, Yasmeen Khan and Shin Parwana.
Run time: 98 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2022
Language: English | Country: UK

Strand: GREAT BRITISH ASIANS

Pravesh Kumar’s debut feature is a laugh-out-loud story of a dysfunctional Punjabi family in the pressure cooker life of a terraced suburban home in West London. Newly arrived from India, naive Simmy has come to marry the family’s eldest son Raj, who shockingly does a runner, leaving Simmy locked in the house by her domineering mother-in-law. However, Simmy is smarter than she appears, and soon enlists the support of the family’s disgruntled in-laws, including a sugar crazed, diabetic grandpa and dangerous, but hot, brother in law, fresh out of jail. Together they plan Simmy’s big escape.

Q&A with Pravesh Kumar cast and crew

Lorni - The Flaneur

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Wanphrang K Diengdoh
Starring: Adil Hussain, Elizer Bareh, Dawait Syiem
Run time: 106 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2019
Language: Khasi, English, Hindi wth English subtitles | Country: Singapore, India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

Acclaimed actor Adil Hussain (Life of Pi, Star Trek), plays Shem, an out of work, self-styled detective with a sharp sense of the streets. Shem is offered an escape from his humdrum investigation work when he is suddenly asked to investigate the disappearance of an object of great cultural value. Navigating the narrow streets and dark alleys, Shem’s journey takes him into the heart and soul of Shillong, where the city’s unique political, racial and cultural identity soon complicate his investigation and even threaten his life.

Online Q&A with Wanphrang K Diengdoh and special guests

Streaming online on LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Love Sex Aur Dhokha

LIFF Festival Screening: 2010

Director: Dibakar Banerjee
Starring: Anshuman Jha, Neha Chauhan, Raj Kumar, Arya Banerjee
Run time: 155 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2009
Language: Hindi, Punjabi, English | Country: India

Shocking and gripping, this international (un-censored) version of LSD pulls no punches as it introduces us to the surveillance stuffed world of modern mega-city India. Deftly told through 3 inter-twinned stories, Banerjee takes us on a roller coaster ride of twisted tales of young love, soaked in betrayal. These are voyeuristically served up for the viewer through a spicy and intrusive mix of modern technology, online chat-date sites, amateur cameras, and supermarket surveillance equipment. Not shying away from hard social issues, the film also vividly portrays social concerns of inter-caste romance, honour killings, and blackmail, where modernity crashes headlong with age-old custom. Our lives are not our own, so be careful what you do! Don’t miss it!

Lucia

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Pawan Kumar
Starring: Sathish, Shruthi Hariharan, Hardhika Shetty, Achyuth Kumar.
Run time: 135 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2013
Language: Kannada / English with English subtitles | Country: India

From the director of smash hit Lifeu Ishtene comes Lucia, heralding a new direction for Kannada cinema, being the industry’s first crowd funded film. An usher at a decrepit cinema suffers from insomnia. His life changes when he starts getting weird and wonderful dreams but with a caveat. Set in the teeming young metropolis that is Bangalore, the film is a turbulent ride where the lines between dreams and reality are blurred to delirious effect. Please don’t reveal the ending after you’ve watched the film. Prepare to be surprised, very surprised.

M Cream | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Agneya Singh
Starring: Imaad Shah, Ira Dubey, Tom Alter, Auritra Ghosh, Beatrice Ordeix.
Run time: 112 mins | Certificate: 15 |
Language: Hindi/English with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >     FILM WEBSITE >

A group of young people from Delhi set off on a road trip to the far reaches of the Himalayas to obtain M Cream, a mythical form of hash. As they journey across the vast expanses of the mountains on their quest, tempers flare, love blooms, truths are revealed and difficult choices have to be made. An encounter with an environmental movement brings meaning to their young lives. This magically trippy film explores urban anomie as set against the lap of Mother Nature and brings to the fore the truth that the journey is more important than the destination. With their incandescent performances Imaad Shah and Ira Dubey, offspring of acclaimed actors Naseeruddin Shah and Lillette Dubey respectively, display that they have inherited their illustrious parents’ acting genes and are the bold new generation of Indian cinema.

Mani Ratnam | Screen Talk

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

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A rare on-stage interview with one of India’s most acclaimed and best loved commercial directors, widely attributed for revolutionising Tamil cinema, and inspiring Bollywood. Mani Ratnam talks about his life and career producing some of India’s most successful films of all time, which rare for commercial cinema have gained both critical awards and box office success. Ratnam’s films like Bombay, Roja, Dil Se, Nayakan and this year O Kadhal Kanmani are known for powerful socio-political scripts, sharp direction, flamboyant cinematography, crisp editing and of course unforgettable music, collaborating with composers like AR Rahman. We will also hear about his screenwriting and producer work and working with some of India’s greatest actors. Mani Ratnam was awarded the Padma Shree in 2002, one of India’s highest civilian honours.

Hosted by Peter Webber

BFI SOUTHBANK

Mapa (Map)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Elías León Siminiani
Starring: Elías León Siminiani.
Run time: 85 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2012
Language: Spanish / English with English subtitles | Country: India

A young Spanish director is fired from his job in television. Taking up his dream of making films, he travels to India hoping to make his first feature film and in the process retraces the journey made by his ex-girlfriend only to discover that his real investigation is not in India but in Madrid. However, when he gets home, things do not turn out exactly as he had expected…Halfway between documentary and fiction, Mapa is a road movie in first person, as defined by its director, a ‘movie-song’. Equally moving and wryly funny, Mapa is an evocation on how different lives can be in different halves of the globe. It won Best Documentary at the Seville Film Festival and was nominated in the same category at Spain’s prestigious Goya Awards.

Mara Pappa Superhero

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Dr. Darshan Ashwin Trivedi
Starring: Bhavya Sirohi, Abhinay Banker, Shraddha Dangar
Run time: 120 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2021
Language: Gujarati with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: YOUNG REBEL

This sweet and charming family film tells the story of a little Gujarati girl’s quest to prove her street vendor father is secretly a superhero. Kanku is a happy-go-lucky kid who is able to find joy and happiness with the small things in life. One day while playing with her rich friend Kiara, she hears Kiara refer to her father as her superhero. Eager to understand, Kanku asks Kiara questions, the answers which lead her to believe her street vendor dad is also a superhero. She sets out at any cost to convince everyone of this fact.

Also streaming online on LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Mard ko Dard Nahin Hota (The Man Who Feels No Pain)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Vasan Bala
Starring: Abhimanyu Dasani, Radhika Madan, Gulshan Devaiah, Mahesh Manjrekar
Run time: 135 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2018
Language: Hindi, English, Marathi, Malayalam with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

Winner of the prestigious Midnight Madness audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival, Mard Ko Nahin Hota is a breathtakingly original and imaginative film. Surya is born with the rare condition of Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. Often confined to the four walls of his house to avoid physical injuries, under the tutelage of his eccentric grandfather Abaja, Surya finds an escape through 80s martial arts films on VHS. Inspired by what he sees Surya sets out to become a martial arts expert like his hero, the one-legged Karate master, Mani. Combining fast-paced edge of your seat action with delirious cinematic pop culture references, Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota is an exhilarating crowd pleaser.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Max, Min & Meowzaki

LIFF Festival Screening: 2023

Director: Padmakumar Narasimhamurthy
Starring: Adil Hussain, Mandira Bedi, Nasser Ali, Nafisa Ali, Siddharth Menon, Medha Shankar, Vidhatri Bandi
Run time: 132 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2022
Language: Hindi, English with English subtitles | Country: India

Max and Min are breaking up, and the future home of their darling cat Meowzaki (named after Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki) hangs in the balance. While navigating their separation and heartbreak, both embark upon vastly different but equally impactful journeys. Catnip for hopeless romantics, this effervescent, crowd-pleasing drama by N Padmakumar (A Billion Colour Story) premiered to great success at Busan International Film Festival.

Meet the Patels | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Geeta Patel, Ravi Patel
Starring: The Patel family.
Run time: 88 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2014
Language: English | Country: USA

PLAY TRAILER >          FILM WEBSITE >

“Sharp” and “riotously funny.” – Variety.

Since its 2014 world premiere, Meet the Patels has won audience awards at festivals including Hot Docs Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival, and Traverse City Film Festival, and it has had a chain of sold-out screenings, making Meet the Patels the sleeper hit of the 2014-15 festival circuit. The Hollywood Reporter recently named it an Oscar contender for Best Documentary.

A wry and witty, spoof comedy doc. about the perils of meeting the girl of your dreams, but don’t worry, your parents are there to set you right and find the perfect wife. American Pie, commitment shy Ravi is making his eccentric Gujarati parents quite jittery. He is nearly 30 and un-married – why? The pressure is applied and after being mentally beaten for months Ravi finally gives up and agrees to traditional matchmaking. Delighted Mom and Pop go into overdrive sending him on a global quest to find the Mrs Patel of his dreams. All seems hopeful, until his secret, ex-girlfriend Audrey reappears.

Mehsampur

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Kabir Singh Chowdhry
Starring: Navjot Randhawa, Devrath Joshi, Lal Chand, Surinder Sonia, Kesar Singh, Tikki, Jagjeet Sandhu
Run time: 96 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2017
Language: Punjabi, Hindi, with English subtitles | Country: India

Oddball filmmaker Devrath arrives in Punjab to make a movie on the popular folk-singing duo Amar Singh Chamkila and Amarjot Kaur who were assassinated in the village of Mehsampur in 1988. He rescues a wannabe actress from lechers and finds a survivor of the assassination and the three of them go on a trip to Mehsampur. Their journey is a breath-taking ride culminating in an explosive finale. This bold, at times psychedelic, film melds together fiction and documentary and explores narrative structures in a way Indian cinema has never seen before. Prepare to be shell-shocked!

Memories in March

LIFF Festival Screening: 2011

Director: Sanjoy Nag
Starring: Deepti Naval, Rituparno Ghosh, Raima Sen
Run time: 104 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2010
Language: Hindi/English/Bengali | Country: India

Intimate and riveting, debutant director Sanjoy Nag presents a delicate tale of unlikely friendship forged through tragedy. Award-winning Actor Deepti Naval plays Arati, a grieving woman who travels to Kolkata on hearing the news of her advertising executive son Siddharth’s fatal car accident.

She is let into his flat by his friend and work colleague Sahana (Raima Sen), who Aarti suspects to be his girlfriend but, sorting through her son’s things and hearing fragments of half spoken conversations, bring Arati to the realisation that she didn’t really know her son at all. The constant presence of her son’s boss Arnob (Rituparno Ghosh) and his reluctance to part with Siddharth’s personal belongings makes Arati wonder.

Soon, she reaches the shocking revelation that Arnob was Siddharth’s lover. Awkwardly the two must, for their own salvation, move forward together. With a wonderfully written script by Ghosh and charged character performances by a great cast this is a must see.

Million Dollar Arm | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2014

Director: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Jon Hamm, Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal, Lake Bell, Alan Arkin, Bill Paxton.
Run time: 124 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2014
Language: English | Country: US

Based on an inspirational true story, Million Dollar Arm is a funny and uplifting journey. US sports agent JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm) travels to India in an effort to save his career by finding a young cricketer to turn into a baseball star. With the help of a retired scout (Alan Arkin) JB sets up a talent contest “The Million Dollar Arm”, discovering Rinku (Life of Pi’s Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh (Slumdog Millionaire’s Madhur Mittal) who have a knack for throwing a fastball. Hoping to make a quick buck he brings them to LA to train, but the boys struggle to adjust. His livelihood on the line and relationship with the boys at stake, with the help of his friend Brenda (Lake Bell) JB realises that family and friendships are more important than sealing the deal. The film features a brilliant score from Oscar, BAFTA and Grammy winning Indian composer A.R. Rahman.

Mississippi Masala

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Mira Nair
Starring: Denzel Washington, Sarita Choudhary, Roshan Seth
Run time: 118 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 1991
Language: English | Country: USA, UK

Strand: WOMEN MAKE MOVIES

Recognising the 50th anniversary of Asian expulsions from East Africa LIFF presents this glorious restoration of a much loved film. After Mina’s (Sarita Choudhury) Indian family is forced out of Uganda, they relocate to rural Mississippi to start a new life. Mina’s traditional family wants her to marry an Indian, but she falls for Demitrius (Denzel Washington), a handsome young carpet cleaner. However their budding relationship struggles to get off the ground as tensions rise and Mina is forced to choose between her love and her family. Mira Nair’s dazzling and heartfelt romance explores issues of race, class and privilege which are still pertinent today.

BSL Signed Panel Debate

Q&A with Mira Nair on www.LoveLIFFatHome.com

Moh Maya Money (In Greed We Trust) | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Munish Bhardwaj
Starring: Ranvir Shorey, Neha Dhupia, Devendra Chauhan.
Run time: 108 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2015
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

In this fast-paced slice of Delhi noir, a crooked real estate broker who dreams of riches, embezzles money from the firm he works for and gets involved in a series of scams. But the proceeds of his schemes are not enough for his greed and when he finds out about a huge deal in his company, he passes it on to a small-time real estate broker and a thug, for a bigger piece of the pie. Soon, he gets involved in a major crime along with his wife. Matters spiral out of control, leading to murder, mayhem and an out of left field twist of a climax. Bollywood stars Ranvir Shorey (star of Cannes Golden Camera nominated Titli) and Neha Dhupia (Singh is King) are on terrific form in this cracking thriller that will leave you gasping for breath.

Monsoon

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Sturla Gunnarsson
Starring: Moushumi Chatterjee, the Prasad family
Run time: 108 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2015
Language: English/Malayalam/Assamese/Marathi/Hindi with English subtitles | Country: Canada

YEAR ROUND PROGRAMME

This documentary feature, shot in stunning 4K, is filmed across the subcontinent, charting the giant rain system’s path as it surges toward and gradually engulfs every region of India. It is a breathtaking cinematic journey into a terrain where nature, science, belief and wonder converge. It introduces us to a remarkable array of individuals whose lives are in different ways entwined with the phenomenon. For some, the great rains will be a time of bountiful sustenance, for others it will be a time of great hardship. All are caught in this timeless human drama. The outstanding score, composed by London’s own Andrew T. MacKay, is based on the Malhar ragas and perfectly complements the multiple-award winning director’s epic vision.

Online Q&A with Sturla Gunnarsson

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

Monsoon | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Sturla Gunnarson
Starring: Moushumi Chatterjee, the Prasad family.
Run time: 108 mins | Certificate: 15 |
Language: English, Malayalam, Assamese, Marathi, Hindi with English subtitles | Country: Canada

PLAY TRAILER >     FILM WEBSITE >

This documentary feature, shot in stunning 4K, is filmed across the subcontinent, charting the giant rain system’s path as it surges toward and gradually engulfs every region of India. It is a breathtaking cinematic journey into a terrain where nature, science, belief and wonder converge. It introduces us to a remarkable array of individuals whose lives are in different ways entwined with the phenomenon. For some, the great rains will be time of bountiful sustenance, for others it will be a time of great hardship. All are caught in this timeless human drama. The outstanding score, composed by London’s own Andrew T. MacKay, is based on the Malhar ragas and perfectly complements the multiple-award winning director’s epic vision.

The Bagri Foundation supports documentary films as a powerful medium to raise social awareness.

Monsoon Shootout | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2013

Director: Amit Kumar
Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vijay Varma, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Neeraj Kabi.
Run time: 88 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2013
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Fresh from critical acclaim in Cannes, director Amit Kumar masterfully blends a dark cop thriller with a Sliding Doors style narrative. It explores the impact that one man’s choices make on the lives of others. As heavy monsoon rains lash the badlands of Mumbai, Adi, a gun toting, rookie cop is out on his first assignment. He faces a life altering decision, whether to shoot, or not to shoot an escaping suspect. His alternative decisions take him on a morality shredding journey, pitting him against a system where the boundaries between the law, crime and self-survival get dangerously blurred. An ensemble cast including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, offer edgy performances in this roller-coaster ride of a movie.

Moving Upstream: Ganga

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Shridhar Sudhir

Run time: 105 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2021
Language: Bengali, Hindi, English with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: SAVE THE PLANET

Filmed over six months on a 2,500km walk along the River Ganges, this stunning documentary explores the idea of walking in this fast paced modern world and man’s evolving relationship with the natural world and bringing a much needed spotlight on the voices an concerns of the communities that depend on India’s greatest watercourse.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 48 hours]

Mughal-E-Azam

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: K Asif
Starring: Pritvhiraj Kapoor, Madhubala, Dilip Kumar
Run time: 197 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 1960
Language: Urdu with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: GOLDEN AGE OF CINEMA

A spectacular historical drama, Mughal-E-Azam tells the tale of a timeless love affair between a Prince and a dancer.

Think mirrored palaces, sumptuous technicolor and unforgettable songs. Mughal-E-Azam has it all! K Asif’s spectacular epic historical drama tells the tale of a timeless love affair. Heir to the throne, Prince Salim (Dilip Kumar), has matured from a self-indulgent only child into a victorious and distinguished warrior. When he returns to the Mughal court he soon falls for the gorgeous, if lowly born, court dancer Anarkali (Madhubala), it provokes the ire of his father, Mughal emperor Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor), who forbids them from getting married. As Anarkali takes a stand for her man, risking execution, father-son conflict explodes into a full blown battle.

Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Vivek Bald

Run time: 83 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2003
Language: English | Country: UK

Strand: GREAT BRITISH ASIANS

An absorbing and thrilling account of the contribution of Asian musicians to British pop in the 90s. Over the course of seven years Vivek Bald captured the rise and fall of what was always imperfectly described as the “Asian Underground”. Shot with virtually no budget in a style that mirrored the ethos of the featured legendary artists such as Asian Dub Foundation, Talvin Singh and Fun^Da^Mental. Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music is part music documentary, part social history and remains as a unique time-capsule on the music culture of the British Asian second generation.
 

In cinema Q&A with special guests

My Beautiful Laundrette

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Stephen Frears
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Gordon Warnecke, Syed Jaffrey
Run time: 97 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 1985
Language: English, Urdu with English subtitles | Country: UK

Strand: GREAT BRITISH ASIANS

The iconic British comedy-drama written by Hanif Kureishi tells a story of culture, capitalism and sexuality in 80s Britain. Naseer (Syed Jaffrey), is a small time entrepreneur and admirer of Thatcher. He gives his shy nephew Omar (Gordon Warnecke), the dubious task of making a rundown laundrette profitable, all starts well until Omar’s erstwhile street punk friend Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis) turns up and they all get into a lather.
 

With a rare on-stage conversation with Hanif Kureishi

 
Image credit: MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE © 1985 Film Four Limited. All Rights Reserved.

My Home India

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Anjali Bhushan
Starring: Kira Banasinska, Wanda Novicka-Kashikar, Wanda Kuras, Jocelyn de Waller, Zbigniew Buras, Longina Frackiewicz, Krystyna Koziell, Colonel Gaikwad, Madhu Kotak
Run time: 45 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2019
Language: English, Polish with English subtitles | Country: India/Poland

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

This inspirational documentary will have you in tears and every Indian glowing with pride. The film essentially uncovers a little-known story of unimaginable humanity, generosity and kindness. Towards the end of WW2 the Polish ambassadorial team in Bombay, led by the determined heroine, Kira Banasinska and supported by local Indian communities including the principalities of Kolhapur, Jamnagar and several others, dispatched a convoy of food relief and other essentials, thousands of miles to Iran, where Polish refugees from Soviet Siberian labour camps had found their way on foot and were suffering, mal-nourished. An expedition was planned with a novel idea, to bring 5,500 women and children back into India in the supplies trucks. This expedition was not so simple. It took Kira’s resilience and indefatigable energy as a Red Cross leader, to create refuge for them and welcome them to a dedicated settlement in India in three critical places, Vallivade, Panchgani and Jamnagar. Over 70 years later a number of now elderly Polish people return to a town, Vallivade, on the outskirts of Kolhapur, Maharashtra and Panchgani, where they were able to find safety and discover the joys of childhood.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Q&A with Director Anjali Bhushan

My Home India

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Anjali Bhushan
Starring: Kira Banasinska, Wanda Novicka-Kashikar, Wanda Kuras, Jocelyn de Waller, Zbigniew Buras, Longina Frackiewicz, Krystyna Koziell, Colonel Gaikwad, Madhu Kotak
Run time: 45 mins | Certificate: PG | Year: 2019
Language: English, Polish with English subtitles | Country: India/Poland

YEAR ROUND PROGRAMME

This inspirational tear-jerker documentary uncovers a little-known story of unimaginable humanity, generosity and kindness. Towards the end of WW2, the Polish ambassadorial team in Bombay, led by the determined heroine Kira Banasinska and supported by several Indian states, dispatched a convoy of food relief and other essentials, thousands of miles to help the Polish refugees in Soviet Siberian labour camps. The expedition however returned to India with 5,500 women and children in the supplies trucks. Thanks to Kira and the hospitality of Indians, the refugees were welcomed and given dedicated settlements in Maharashtra. Over 70 years later a number of now elderly Polish people return for the first time to India to see where they experienced the joys of childhood.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

My Son is Gay

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Lokesh Kumar
Starring: Anupama Kumar, Ashwinjith, Abhishek Joseph George, Kishore Kumar
Run time: 105 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2017
Language: Tamil with English Subtitles | Country: India

Varun is a happy-go-lucky, handsome young man who is the apple of his mother Lakshmi’s eye. He believes his mother would be by his side no matter what. When Lakshmi discovers Varun is gay, she is shocked and vows it is something she will never accept.  As he decides to move on with his life and find love, Lakshmi decides to seek out her lost son. My Son is Gay is a poignant tale of a multilayered mother son relationship, that sensitively tackles universal themes of tolerance and acceptance. 

In partnership with Queer Asia 

SOAS University – KHALIL LECTURE THEATRE

Naanu Avanalla Avalu (I Am Not He...She) | European Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: B S Lingadevaru
Starring: Sanchari Vijay, Sharada Nani, Kunal Punekar.
Run time: 115 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2014
Language: Kannada with English subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >

Based on an empowering true story, Madesha is a fearless young boy from rural Karnataka who cherishes his female persona and gorgeous saris. His sister enjoys his natural flamboyance and zest for life, but his father is ashamed of him and throws him out. Madesha picks himself up and sets out on a journey that will change his life forever as he decides to become a woman. In big-city Bangalore he seeks the support of local queens and the Hijra community (Eunuchs and Transgender people), but after a perilous surgery at a backstreet sex change clinic and name change to Vidya, she decides the traditional begging and prostitute life of a Hijra is not for her. Vidya wants something better.

Nachom-Ia Kumpasar | International Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Bardroy Barretto
Starring: Vijay Maurya, Palomi Ghosh, Prince Jacob, John D'Silva, Meenacshi Martins.
Run time: 156 mins | Certificate: 15 |
Language: Romi Konkani with English Subtitles | Country: India

PLAY TRAILER >          FILM WEBSITE >

A tribute to the unsung musicians of Goa, who perfected the Portuguese influenced jazz sound that became the soundtrack to Hindi cinema in the 60s and 70s, the film revolves around a married bandleader and his tempestuous relationship with his lead singer as they perform all over India, winning acclaim and hearts. Ravishing to look at and painstaking in its recreation of the era (it won India’s national film award for production design), the film is a crowd-funded and crowd-pleasing musical with glorious recreation of more than 20 Konkani-language jazz standards. Based on the real lives of musicians, the film name checks and features music legends like Chic Chocolate and Anthony Gonsalves and the immortal singer Mohammed Rafi shows up for a cameo. The film also boldly states that many classic Hindi songs of the period that are hummed even today are in reality based on the unaccredited compositions of these musicians.

Nandita Das In Conversation

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

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Strand: IN CONVERSATION

Nandita is one of those actors who seems to be loved everywhere she goes, none less than her roles at Cannes, where she has served twice as a jury member. Highly intelligent, an effortlessly elegant character actor with an ability to speak numerous Indian languages, Nandita has played in over 40 feature films so far directed by some of India’s top indie directors. Her memorable debut being the pioneering love story Fire, directed by Deepa Mehta, which was distributed globally. Nandita was able to utilise her literary background in her two features so far as a director, the subtly political drama Firaaq (2008) and Manto (2018) which premiered at Cannes Un Certain Regard. In 2011, she was made Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, for her work in Indo-French co-operation in cinema, and was the first Indian to be inducted into the International Hall of Fame International Women’s Forum in Washington. Nandita is a tireless champion of cinema, human rights and health.

KINDLY SUPPORTED BY THE BAGRI FOUNDATION

Nayakan

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Mani Ratnam
Starring: Kamal Haasan, Saranya, Janagaraj, Nasser.
Run time: 145 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 1987
Language: Tamil with English subtitles | Country: India

We are proud to present a brand new print of this milestone of Indian cinema. Velu is a young man who ekes out a living with some petty smuggling in a Bombay Tamil slum. He becomes an instant hero when he stands up to the cruel local policeman. From then on he is the ‘Nayakan’ (Godfather) of the community and becomes one of Bombay’s most respected and feared Mafia dons. Kamal Haasan’s towering central performance, combined with Indian great Mani Ratnam’s direction and PC Sreeram’s ravishing cinematography made this an instant classic. Time magazine included the film in its list of All-Time 100 Best Films.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to watch a pivotal and epic work of Indian cinema in all its glory on the big screen.

Nazarband (Captive)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Suman Mukhopadhyay
Starring: Tanmay Dhanania, Indira Tiwari
Run time: 85 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2020
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

After five years in prison, Vasanti is released only to realise that her husband has not come to receive her. Confused and in despair she begrudgingly teams up with Chandu, a male ex-con released on the same day, and together they embark on a quest to find her family. As the pair struggle through the streets of Kolkata their dependency on each other grows as their search becomes increasingly perilous.

Online Q&A

Necklace

LIFF Festival Screening: 2012

Director: Shekhar Das
Starring: Rituparna Sengupta, Locket Chatterjee, Dipankar Dey
Run time: 110 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2011
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

A deftly delivered, charming comedy of errors set in contemporary suburban Kolkata. A corporate executive and his wife Shikha (Sengupta) face a bewildering situation when they confront a hapless burglar who has broken into their house at night. Trying to escape, the burglar leaps from their balcony and injures himself. The burglar makes out he is dying and the hapless exec and spouse now fear being sued and rush him to hospital, but then the burglar’s crazy wife arrives claiming compensation. The couple panic and invite her in to console her, all seems to be put to rights until Shikha discovers the burglar’s wife has now nicked her favourite necklace.

Nepal Charity Event with Manisha Koirala | Screening Bombay

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

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Nepalese born Bollywood actress Manisha Koirala jets into London for this Charity Gala to raise much needed funds to re-build homes in earthquake devastated Nepal. This special event organised by the festival, with Grange Hotels as the Sponsor and the Indian Ocean Disaster Relief (IODR), as the beneficiary charity with all funds raised on the night ring-fenced for Nepal, will include an exclusive screening of Bollywood classic Bombay, specially introduced by its heroine Manisha Koirala and its Director Mani Ratnam. This is accompanied by a Champagne Reception and sumptuous three course banquet and fundraiser at the 5* Grange St Pauls Hotel.

New Brit-Asian Shorts + Q&A

LIFF Festival Screening: 2023

Director: Various Directors

Run time: 100 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2022

Support your local filmmaker. This curated selection of shorts focuses on the work of diverse filmmakers ranging across the UK. From award-winning dramas to insightful docs, the programme presents compelling, rarely seen perspectives on Asian Britain today.

Short Film Programme

The Pink Pill
Dir: Cassiah Joski Jethi
20 mins | English
Valentine’s Day. Two young people looking for love meet in a Love Hotel for their second date. Girl seems nervous. Boy seems forward. We’ve all seen this a million times before, right? Wrong.

Kiran
Dir: Bhulla Beghal
8 mins | English
Kiran, once a happily married independent business owner is now the full time carer of her elderly mother who is suffering from dementia. In the throws of routine and repeating calls for help, Kiran breaks.

Indi
Dir: Billy Dosanjh
16 mins | English
Set in the mid ’90s, Indi charts the world of emigre mother, Sheeru, and her British born son Indi, who dreams of playing professional football.

Baked Beans
Dir: Matt Ayleigh
10 mins | English
When Nik auditions for a radical retelling of the British Asian classic ‘East is East’, he soon begins to wonder if everyone around him is also stuck in the past.

In Residence
Dir: Nisha Duggal
7 mins | Bengali, English, Hindi with English subtitles
Tracing a love story through an Indian couple’s migration to Britain in the 1970s. Excerpts from a series of letters exchanged between the pair across continents are performed by the letter-writers themselves.

SURPRI-!
Dir: Rory D Bentley
3 mins | English
A young man discovers his Papaji (Grandad) has died watching porn on the eve of his surprise birthday party…

Yellow
Dir: Elham Ehsas
13 mins | Dari
In Taliban controlled Afghanistan, Laili walks into a Chadari store in Kabul to buy her first full body veil from a Talib shopkeeper and face a new future.

Things We Never Said
Dir: Manjinder Virk
16 mins | English
Three British Asian siblings find themselves in remote Bulgaria where their father is suddenly taken ill. Once in this foreign land an unexpected incident forces them to deal with a truth none of them are ready for.

Some of the filmmakers will join us for a discussion after the screening.

Newton

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Amit Masurkar
Starring: Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathy, Anjali Patil
Run time: 106 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2017
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles | Country: India

An award-winner at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017, this delightful black comedy stars one of India’s top young character actors, Rajkummar Rao, as Newton, an everyday clerk who is selected for election duty in the conflict-ridden Indian state of Chhattisgarh. As local police and Maoists harass the locals and the voting process spirals out of control, the morally driven Newton becomes a reluctant hero in his zest to save the day.

Nirbashito (Banished) | UK Premiere

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Churni Ganguly
Starring: Churni Ganguly,Raima Sen, Saswata Chatterjee.
Run time: 108 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2014
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India/Sweden

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Accomplished female Actor/Director Churni Ganguly’s powerful story explores a writer’s forced exile from Bengal. The police arrive at the writer’s home and she is informed that she must leave her homeland immediately. There are numerous death threats after a furore has exploded on her writings on women’s rights and fundamentalism. Forced to abandon her beloved Persian cat and loyal friends she ends up alone in a safe house in Scandinavia, struggling to make new allies in a cold, foreign country that doesn’t understand her culture, or why she has ended up there.

No Ground Beneath The Feet

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Mohammad Rabby Mridha
Starring: Priyam Archi, Mostafa Monwar, Deepanwita Martin
Run time: 91 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2021
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: Bangladesh

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

This must-see film opens with a mafia don shaving a terrified Saiful in a barber shop chair, with a cut throat razor, reminding him to pay up. This high style film continues in a similar fast based vien, as impoverished Dhaka based ambulance driver Saif is faced to deal with the relentless struggle for survival. Living two lives, his town wife demands duty, while he hears from his real wife and children by the coast, that a flood is coming. Hoping to rescue his family, Saif tries ever riskier jobs, conflicting his morality in order to save the day.

Q&A with Mohammad Rabby Mridha (TBC)

No Land's Man

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Mostofa Sarwar Farooki
Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Eisha Chopra, Megan Mitchell
Run time: 101 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2021
Language: English, Hindi, Urdu, French, Bengali with English subtitles | Country: USA, India, Bangladesh, Australia

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

In 2019, a man named Naveen (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) disappears from a memorial park in Sydney while travelling with his girlfriend Cathy. Flashback to New York two years earlier, Naveen finds a job at a restaurant where he meets Cathy, but he is never able to truly be himself, struggling to forge an identity as a migrant in the city. As their relationship deepens, Naveen’s lies begin to catch up with him and unable to tell the truth about anything including his name and nationality, his relationship with Cathy is put to the test and his own existence questioned. One of leading figures of new Bangladeshi cinema, Farooki’s latest is a stirring tale of a man desperately seeking to manufacture an identity in a new place that will allow him to just exist.

Q&A with Mostafa Sarwar Farooki

Nonajoler Kabbo (The Salt in our Waters)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Rezwan Shahriar Sumit
Starring: Fazlur Rahman Babu, Shatabdi Wadud, Titas Zia
Run time: 106 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2020
Language: Bangla with English subtitles | Country: Bangladesh, France

Strand: SAVE THE PLANET

Co-produced by Spike Lee’s company, this lavishly photographed film was born to be seen on the big screen! Set in the stunning, unlimited vistas of coastal Bangladesh we meet Rudro, a young artist, who after the death of his father, relocates to a remote beach village to find closure and practice his craftsmanship. At first he is welcomed by the traditional locals, but when the fish shoals they rely on suddenly disappear, Rudro’s modern ideas are blamed. As a cyclone approaches, social and physical storms threaten Rudro’s way of life.

Online Q&A with Rezwan Shahriar Sumit and crew

Once Again (Pinneyum)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Starring: Dileep, Kavya Madhavan, Subodh Bhave, Nedumudi Venu
Run time: 121 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2016
Language: Malayalam with English Subtitles | Country: India

Master Kerala filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan returns to LIFF with a powerful tale of family betrayal and murder. Unemployed Purushothaman (Dileep) marries hardworking schoolteacher Devi (Madhavan) and finally gets a job offer in Dubai. However, when he takes out a hefty life insurance deal, he is overcome by relatives’ demands for money and he plots to fake his own death.

Once Upon a Time in Calcutta

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Aditya Vikram Sengupta
Starring: Sreelekha Mitra, Shayak Roy, Bratya Basu
Run time: 131 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2021
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India, France, Norway

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

World premiered at Venice Film Festival, Sengupta’s gorgeously shot film follows the story of Ela, a failed actress; she has recently lost her daughter – who was the only reason for Ela to stay with her husband. Ela faces various setbacks in her personal, professional and love life, but she doesn’t lose hope and sets out to find a new identity, love and independence in the booming streets of Calcutta. Helmed by beautifully nuanced performance from Sreelekha Mitra, the film captures the hustle and bustle of a city constantly in a state of flux.

Q&A with director Aditya Vikram Sengupta

One Crazy Thing

LIFF Festival Screening: 2015

Director: Amit Gupta
Starring: Ray Panthaki, Daisy Bevan, Dan Skinner.
Run time: 90 mins | Certificate: 15 |
Language: English | Country: UK

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This delightful charmer follows Jay, a former daytime TV star who is haunted by the sex tape that destroyed his life and turned his unknown actress girlfriend into an A-list Hollywood celebrity. As he cowers in obscurity managing his family’s Indian restaurant, he meets his dream girl Hannah, a beautiful American music student who hates modern life, and above all, dishonesty. Jay must now confront the errors of his past, rather than hiding from his future. Filled with warmth, music and delicious Indian food, the film is also a celebration of modern London in all her glory. It features a winning performance from BAFTA Breakthrough Brit Ray Panthaki and a star-making turn from Daisy Bevan, the latest entrant from the revered Redgrave acting dynasty.

One Crazy Thing

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Amit Gupta
Starring: Ray Panthaki, Daisy Bevan, Dan Renton Skinner
Run time: 94 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2016
Language: English | Country: UK

YEAR ROUND PROGRAMME

This delightful charmer follows Jay, a former daytime TV star who is haunted by the sex tape that destroyed his life and turned his unknown actress girlfriend into an A-list Hollywood celebrity. As he cowers in obscurity managing his family’s Indian restaurant, he meets his dream girl Hannah, a beautiful American music student who hates modern life, and above all, dishonesty. Jay must now confront the errors of his past, rather than hiding from his future. Filled with warmth, music and delicious Indian food, the film is also a celebration of modern London in all her glory. It features a winning performance from BAFTA Breakthrough Brit Ray Panthaki and a star-making turn from Daisy Bevan, the latest entrant from the revered Redgrave acting dynasty.

Screening online at LoveLIFFAtHome.com

Love Sonia

LIFF Festival Screening: 2018

Director: Tabrez Noorani
Starring: Mrunal Thakur, Freida Pinto, Demi Moore, Mark Duplass, Manoj Bajpayee, Rajkummar Rao, Richa Chadda, Riya Sisodiya, Anupam Kher, Adil Hussain, Sunny Pawar
Run time: 120 mins | Certificate: 18 | Year: 2018
Language: English, Hindi, Cantonese with English subtitles | Country: India

Inspired by true events, this is the story of a young Indian village girl, Sonia. Her life changes irrevocably when she is entrapped in the global sex trade while trying to save her beloved sister Preeti. Struggling to free herself from small-time pimps, Sonia does not realise they are merely the foot soldiers of a ruthless, powerful army with its reach around the world. As she becomes aware of the enormity of the odds against her, Sonia is sustained by a fragile dream that is worth surviving for. Battling with a strength she didn’t know she had, her searing journey spans three continents and a lifetime of experiences that no young girl should have. Sonia is determined not to become one of the 800,000 women and children who are victims of the international sex trade industry every year.

WARNING: This film depicts scenes of sexual violence that may be disturbing to some viewers. 

Q&A with director Tabrez Noorani and cast and crew

OPENING NIGHT: The Black Prince

LIFF Festival Screening: 2017

Director: Kavi Raz
Starring: Satinder Sartaaj, Jason Flemyng, Shabana Azmi, Aanda Root, Ameet Chana, David Essex
Run time: 118 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2017
Language: English, Punjabi & Hindi with English Subtitles | Country: UK, India

Punjabi music superstar Satinder Sartaaj shines in his film debut as Maharaja Duleep Singh alongside powerful Indian actor Shabana Azmi and Jason Flemyng (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). The Black Prince  is an exquisitely photographed and sumptuously designed period drama with a tiger’s bit as it offers an insight into a controversial chapter of shared British Indian colonial history. After the death of Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Punjab, there is a violent war of succession until his youngest son, the five-year-old Duleep Singh is installed as king. The British, however, have other plans and bundle the boy off to England where he is brought up as a Christian in the lap of luxury under the personal care of Queen Victoria (Amanda Root). In early adulthood Duleep (Satinder Sartaaj) is torn between two cultures and secures begrudging permission from Queen Victoria to meet his real mother (Shabana Azmi). She soon awakens him to his original Sikh faith and culture, which sets him on a dangerous quest to challenge the British Raj and free his people.

Ottaal (The Trap)

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Jayaraj Rajasekharan Nair
Starring: Shine Tom Chacko, Kumarakom Vasavan, Ashanth K. Sha
Run time: 81 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 2015
Language: Malayalam with English subtitles | Country: India

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Master Director Jayaraj won the Crystal Bear at this year’s Berlinale with this adaption of Anton Chekhov’s social concern short story Vanka – transposing it into the sumptuous wetlands of the Southern Indian state of Kerala. Kuttappayi has lost both his parents but has been raised by his loving grandfather. Together they tend flocks of ducks in vast flooded fields and tell each other whimsical stories. Kuttappayi’s life seems good and easy and he dreams of going to school, but suddenly the old man falls ill and very soon the boy’s future is put into doubt. The hard realities of poverty, shared by so many millions of children around the world, soon mean that Kuttappayi must face a hard new future to survive.

PAKA: The River of Blood

LIFF Festival Screening: 2022

Director: Dir. Nithin Lukose
Starring: Basil Paulose, Vinitha Koshy, Jose Kizhakkan
Run time: 101 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2021
Language: Malayalam With English subs | Country: India

Strand: EXTRA-ORDINARY LIVES

With echoes of Romeo and Julliet, a tale of violent inter-family vengeance, set aside a river that runs through a village in North Kerala. Nithin Lukose’s character focused film follows Johnny and Anna, two lovers from opposing sides of the conflict who plan to unite the two families. However the arrival of Johnny’s uncle from gaol reignites the flames of the simmering conflict and throws Johnny and Annas plans into disarray.

Parched

LIFF Festival Screening: 2016

Director: Leena Yadav
Starring: Radhika Apte, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Surveen Chawla, Lehar Khan
Run time: 117 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2015
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

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Director Leena Yadav tells a wonderfully joyous and inspiring tale of comradery. Four ordinary women live in a desert Gujarati village, weighed down by centuries of tradition. Rani (Tannishtha Chatterjee) lost her husband at 16 and struggles to bring up her teenage son, careful to follow every village rule. Her friend Lajjo (Radhika Apte) is always brimming with positivity, but fears beatings from her drunken husband. Bijli (Surveen Chawla) is secretly Rani’s friend, she’s a local performer and prostitute, but her beauty is coming to an end along with her youth. Janaki (Lehar Khan) is a child bride to Rani’s son, secretly struggling to come to terms with a loveless marriage. As the magical festival of Dussehra approaches these friends’ bonds are put to the test, forcing them to make decisions that will dynamically change their lives forever.

Pather Panchali

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Satyajit Ray
Starring: Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Chunibala Devi, Uma Das Gupta, Subir Banerjee
Run time: 125 mins | Certificate: U | Year: 1955
Language: Bengali with English subtitles | Country: India

We are delighted to present an introductory talk, “Satyajit Ray and his French Connection”, before our screening of Pather Panchali by writer Andrew Robinson, who is considered one of the world’s greatest authorities on Satyajit Ray, and has written extensively on Ray and his Apu Trilogy in books and the international press. Robinson will explore Ray’s lesser-known close connection with French artists including filmmaker Jean Renoir and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as provide an insight into Ray’s background, films and the making of Pather Panchali. Andrew Robinson will publish a centenary edition of Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye with Bloomsbury in September.

Probably Satyajit Ray’s most internationally acclaimed film. The Song of the Little Road as it is known in English, is based on Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 Bengali novel of the same name. It depicts the childhood joys and struggles of the main protagonist Apu (Subir Banerjee), and his sister Durga (Uma Das Gupta), as they encounter both the beauty of the Bengali countryside, and also the cruel hardships of being the poor family of the village, after their father deserts them. This classic boasts magical cinematography by Subrata Mitra and an unforgettable musical score by Ravi Shankar.

Photograph

LIFF Festival Screening: 2019

Director: Ritesh Batra
Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra, Gitanjali Kulkarni, Farrukh Jaffar
Run time: 110 mins | Certificate: 12A | Year: 2019
Language: Hindi, Gujarati, English with English subtitles | Country: India/Germany/US

CLOSING NIGHT GALA

Cannes hit The Lunchbox took the world by storm with box office success in all territories. Its director Ritesh Batra returns to the big screen with this nuanced romance between unlikely lovers. Acting legend Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays Rafi, a humble street photographer outside the Gateway of India, Mumbai. He photographs an attractive young wealthy woman Miloni, who disappears without paying. Keeping her photo, he tries to fob off his marriage-peddling granny by sending her the photo to show his success, but impressed, she is soon heading to Mumbai to meet the marriage prospect. Rafi manages to track down Miloni and convince her to pretend to be his fiancée, and, partly intrigued by rough diamond Rafi’s request and partly because she’s looking for something extraordinary, she agrees.

Please remember there are no adverts before festival screenings so we encourage you to arrive in good time.

Q&A with Director Ritesh Batra

Pop City

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Rohit Mittal
Starring: Arjun Radhakrishnan, Naina Sareen, Preeti Sharma
Run time: 80 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 2019
Language: Hindi with English subtitles | Country: India

Strand: Young Rebel

A young and ruthless gun for hire Gulshan, lives a lonely life in Mumbai, dreaming of becoming the number one hitman in the city. He is presented with the opportunity to achieve his goals after being approached by a mysterious organisation to kill a journalist. As Gulshan stalks his prey, learning his every move and planning when to make the hit, Gulshan’s everyday life begins to get mixed in with his professional life and the best laid plans quickly vortex out of control

Online Q&A with Rohit Mittal

Streaming online on LoveLIFFAtHome.com [available for 24 hours]

Pratibha Parmar: Asian Artists in Emergence

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Pratibha Parmar

Run time: 71 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 1986, 1989, 1990
Language: English | Country:

Strand: GREAT BRITISH ASIANS

Our second programme of documentaries by legendary filmmaker Pratibha Parmar charts the rise of a new generation of Asian artists in Britain and globally from the mid 1980s to early 90s, with pioneering artists who broke artistic and cultural boundaries who were shaped by feminist and sexual politics. These films include rare conversations with photographer Sunil Gupta, visual artist Sutapa Biswas and acclaimed writer poet Sunita Namjoshi, who explore their practice and thoughts on contemporary culture. Parmar’s free-flowing montage style brings artists and their works together, which in itself creates a sensory discourse.

Emergence | 1986 | 20 mins
Memory Pictures | 1989 | 24 mins
Flesh & Paper | 1990 | 27 mins

Pratibha Parmar: British Asians - The Underground Generations

LIFF Festival Screening: 2021

Director: Pratibha Parmar

Run time: 85 mins | Certificate: 15 | Year: 1988, 1994, 1998
Language: English | Country: