Going live online on Wednesday May 13th with its first selection of films, the Bagri Foundation London Indian Film Festival (LIFF) & Birmingham Indian Film Festival (BIFF) will showcase its 9 award-winning short films that reflect the focus and ethos of Satyajit Ray's passion for empathetic stories on the struggles of common people. After a 10 year run and becoming the largest annual Indian film event in Europe, the festival team were challenged on how to present the four city festival this June.
In reaction to the current challenging times, the solution of finding new ways to stay connected with audiences, comes via the delivery of an online version of the festival, on its own OTT Platform, for viewing at home. LIFF is the first Indian film festival to make this digital leap and will continue to push the boundaries by showing high quality movies in a diversity of South Asian languages with ‘London Indian Film Festival at Home'. Visit the official link here.
As lock-down continues in the UK, the festival is being supported by an Audience Award from BFI (British Film Institute), using National Lottery funds, the Bagri Foundation to develop a new hybrid, part-digital and part cinema based model strategy which will be rolled out this year and into the future. South Asian filmmakers have already crucially rallied to support the festival's online initiative and this is helping LIFF offer the festival for free for a limited time.
Working with New Zealand's Shift 72, who launched CPH:Dox online in March, a new UK geo-blocked platform will launch, with the award winners of the last 9 years of the Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition. Ray's family granted the festival the right to use the master filmmaker's name as the films are selected to follow Ray's focus of South Asian experience and humanist vision. The showcased short films have been programmed together for the first time and include early works of lauded directors Neeraj Ghaywan (Cannes FIPRESCI and Prix de l'Avenir winner Masaan) and Shubashish Bhutiani (UNESCO prize-winning, BFI distributed Hotel Salvation). The festival will follow this with a host of feature films being launched in the summer.
The 9 Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition winning films:
U Ushacha (2019 Winner)
Year: 2019 | Country: India
Director: Rohan Kanwade
Run time: 21 mins
Language: Marathi with English Subtitles
Synopsis: Usha, a single mother who works as a farm labourer, feels drawn to a female teacher of the local primary school in ways she never thought possible, The attraction inspires her to learn to read and write, one day hoping to be as good as her teacher.
The Peanut Seller (2018 Winner)
Country: India/Germany Director: Etienne Sievers
Run time: 19 mins
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles
Synopsis: An orphaned young ragpicker battling isolation and poverty in the streets of New Delhi tries to locate the one man capable of helping him find his mother.
Papa (2017 Winner)
Country: India
Director: Siddarth Chauhan
Run time: 15 mins
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles
Synopsis: A paralysed mother, Sushma and her young son, Rajiv are learning to adjust with their new life after an accident leaves their lives changed forever. Sushma's only hope is a pigeon, which she found in her house on the day her husband died.
Mochi (The Cobbler) (2016 Winner)
Country: India
Director: Saqib Pandon
Run time: 20 mins
Language: Hindi, Marathi with English Subtitles
Synopsis: Gopal, a Mumbai cobbler at a railway station, struggles to make ends meet in his minimum wage job. With a growing son, it takes a fine balance to manage the family finances. It just takes on careless mistake.
Khargosh (The Rabbit) (2015 Winner)
Country: India
Director: Sudarshan Suresh
Run time: 14 mins
Language: Bengali with English Subtitles
Synopsis: A debt ridden farmer struggles to keep afloat amidst mounting pressure from his money lenders. When his young daughter decides to adopt a stray rabbit, the relationship between father and daughter is put to the test.
Kush (2014 Winner)
Country: India
Director: Shubhashish Bhutiani
Run time: 20 mins
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles
Synopsis: In the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination by her two Sikh bodyguards, a school teacher travelling back from a field trip with her class struggles to protect Kush, the only Sikh student in the class, from the growing violence around him.
Kaun Kamleshwar (2013 Winner)
Country: India
Director: Anurag Goswami
Run time: 19 mins
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles
Synopsis: Brothers Madhav and Raghu travel back to their village with a clear mission – to find Kamleshwar and put an end to their troubles. Fate, however, takes an unexpected turn….
Shor (2012 Winner)
Country: India
Director: Neeraj Ghaywan
Run time: 17 mins
Language: Hindi with English Subtitles
Synopsis: Barely surviving in the seedy ghettos of Mumbai, Lallam and Meena find each other while embracing death, divorce and redemption.
Amar (2011 Winner)
Country: India
Director: Andrew Hinton
Run time: 10 mins
Language: English
Synopsis: All great achievements require time. Amar is 14 and top of his class. Someday he'd like to be a professional cricket but for now he's the family's main breadwinner. An observational documentary which leads us through Amar's daily routine.
