The 19th Annual New York Indian Film Festival Announces Full Lineup May 7 – May 12

Special Spotlight on the New York premiere of Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded By The Light Plus Focus on Bengali Cinema that includes Bengali Master Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Urojahaj (The Flight)

The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) announced the full lineup at the Launch event for their 19th year of celebrating Independent, art house, alternate, and diaspora films from the Indian subcontinent (May 7– May 12) at the Village East Cinemas in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (181-189 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10003). Dedicated to bringing these films to a New York audience, the festival will feature 32 screenings (29 narrative, 3 documentary and 32 short films). NYIFF will be featuring 7 World Premieres along with an International Premiere and 5 US premieres and the rest of the films being NY premieres. NYIFF has been the go-to festival to see South Asian diaspora films that have not been seen in New York City and is continuing with this mission for the nineteenth year.

This year NYIFF has the largest number of regional (non-Hindi) language films – 20 in total. The languages focused on are Assamese, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Ladakhi, Punjabi, and Harayanavi and all the films will have English subtitles.

NYIFF Festival Director Aseem Chhabra said

“We are thrilled to share our lineup for this year. The NYIFF programming team has spent a number of months watching, tracking films and we now present to the audience the best of Indian cinema.”

Returning to NYIFF is award-winning filmmaker, Gurinder Chadha with her new film. The festival will be hosting a Special Spotlight of Chadha’s Blinded by the Light, which will be making its New York debut after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is inspired by the true story of journalist Sarfraz Manzoor and his lifelong love of Bruce Springsteen.

Bengali Master Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Urojahaj (The Flight) will be a part of the special focus on Bengali cinema that NYIFF will be presenting this year. Seven features will be a part of this presentation, many by first time filmmakers, putting a spotlight on a resurgence of films from West Bengal.

Arijit Singh, a widely popular Bollywood singer will be highlighted at the festival with his second directorial venture Sa- a tribute to Satyajit Ray and Ravi Shankar. Anoushka Shankar plays sitar for the film.

Other highlights of the festival include Assamese filmmaker, Rima Das whose last film Village Rockstars was India’s official entry for the 2019 Oscars. Rima’s new film Bulbul Can Sing will have its NY premiere at NYIFF along with Assamese master and National Film Award Winner Jahnu Barua’s World premiere of his new film Bhoga Khirikee (Broken Window).

Short Filmmakers Ashuman Sharma (Jalebi) and Vick Krishna (Mokshi) were in attendance at the NYIFF Launch event on Thursday, April 18 at the Consulate General of India, New York. They are a part of NYIFF’s four short programs that includes a total of 32 short films.

Also announced at the NYIFF Launch, Celebrity Chef and filmmaker Vikas Khanna was named the Brand Ambassador of the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC). Khanna is a Michelin-star chef as well as a cookbook author, humanitarian, filmmaker and was once voted New York City’s hottest chef. Khanna’s The Last Color starring Neena Guptawill be the prestigious Closing Night film for the festival and will be honoring mothers around the world on Mother’s Day.

Said Sunil Hali, Executive Director and President, IAAC,

“We have received tremendous support from Ambassador Sandeep Chakravorty and Consulate General India, New York. Corporate sponsors such as AIR INDIA, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank amongst others have come forward with significant contributions. The PIERRE from Taj Group continues to expand the relationship with IAAC. Local regional and community associations such as “Sadhu Vaswani Centers” continue to help in supporting our expanded mandate to promote regional films. Film schools have joined hands and now the leading broadcaster, IndiaCast with Viacom18 has confirmed as our exclusive broadcast partner for NYIFF2019 in USA in “powered by” category. A special 30-minute curtain raiser and a 90-minute special on NYIFF2019 will be produced by IndiaCast and aired on “Aapka Colors” and “Colors Rishtey”. We look forward to building such a relationship to make NYIFF2019 a great success”.

TICKET INFO:
Regular tickets $20, Student (w/ID) $10
Opening Night and Closing Night tickets $35
Day Passes are also available
More info here: https://www.iaac.us/nyiff2019/schedule.htm

The films playing below are:

Bhonsle	Hindi	Dir: Devashish Makhija	NY premiere
Yours Truly	Hindi	Dir: Sanjoy Nag	NY premiere
Sir (Opening Night film)	Hindi	Dir: Rohena Gera	NY premiere
Photograph (Centerpiece film)	Hindi	Dir: Ritesh Batra	NY premiere
The Last Color (Closing Night film)	Hindi	Dir: Vikas Khanna	NY premiere
Sidhustan (doc)	English	Dir: Sapna Bhawnani	World premiere
The Sound Man: Mangesh Desai	English/ Hindi	Dir: Subash Sahoo	NY premiere
Midnight Delhi	Hndi	Dir: Rakesh Rawat	US premiere
Hamid	Hindi	Dir: Aijaz Khan	NY premiere
Bulbul Can Sing	Assamese	Dir: Rima Das	NY premiere
Aamis	Assamese	Dir: Bhaskar Hazarika
Bhoga Khirikee	Assamese	Dir: Jahnu Barua	World premiere
Chegu	Bengali	Dir: Nabamita Ghosh	US premiere
The Flight	Bengali	Dir: Buddhadev Dasgupta	US premiere
The Bose Family	Bengali	Dir: Suman Ghosh	International premiere
Chippa	Bengali	Dir: Syed Safdar Rahman	NY premiere
Kia and Cosmos	Bengali	Dir: Sudipto Roy	NY premiere
Sa	Bengali	Dir: Arijit Singh	International premiere
Cat Sticks	Bengali/ Hindi	Dir: Ronny Sen	NY premiere
Baggage	Kannada	Dir: Roopa Rao	World premiere
Good Guy, Bad Guy (doc)	Kannada, English	Dir: Indu Krishnan	NY premiere
Chuskit	Ladakhi	Dir: Priya Ramasubban	NY premiere
Abode	Malayalam	Dir: Jaya Jose Raj	World premiere
Paani	Marathi	Dir: Adinath Kothare	World premiere
Roots	Tamil	Dir: Anand Ravichandaran	World premiere
Kattumaram	Tamil	Dir: Swarnavel Eswaran	World premiere
Shivaranjani and Two Other Women	Tamil	Dir: Vasanth Sai	NY premiere
K.D. (a) Karuppa Durai	Tamil	Dir: Madhumita Sundararaman	US premiere
Draupadi Unleashed	English	Dir: Tony Stopperan	NY premiere
Salute	Punjabi	Dir: Harish Arora	NY premiere