London India Film Festival Puts Spotlight On Women Filmmakers

London India Film Festival (LIFE) which returns to the cinemas across the city on Thursday is all set to have an all-women filmmaker line up for the screenings. The festival is being held amid a COVID-19 secure setting. The highlights of this year’s festival include sci-fi film Cargo directed by Arati Kadav and produced by filmmaker Anurag Kashyap along with Deepti Gupta’s documentary, Shut Up Sona, featuring Sona Mohapatra. In this documentary, Sona Mohapatra gets candid about the discrimination women face in the music industry. The festival team has assured its screenings are being run in accordance with UK govt. guidelines.

The line-up also includes Tannishtha Chaterjee's directorial debut, Roam Rome Mein, starring actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui alongside an Italian cast. Also, Bollywood actress Vidya Balan’s short film production Natkhat, which is about  a mother who is trying to stop her seven-year-old son from adopting the machismo ideals and beliefs.

Also Read: Filmmaker Mira Nair Honoured With TIFF Tribute Award 2020

"It's been an adventure this year to transform Europe's largest South Asian film festival into both a digital version that continues to attract good audiences and an actual physical film festival and we are delighted to be dipping our toes into cinemas again with the support of our regular cinema partners BFI Southbank and Ciné Lumière and new partners Millennium Point in Birmingham, presenting a power-packed all-female program,” said Cary Rajinder Sawhney, Executive and Programming Director of LIFF and the Birmingham Indian Film Festival, quoted FirstPost.

The festival along with having a powerpack all-women line up is following an electronic avatar as a response to the pandemic with LoveLIFFatHOME.com, which hosted events with leading film talents and Oscar nominees like Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair and Bollywood stars like Ayushmann Khurrana, Anurag Kashyap and Shabana Azmi among others.

Also Read: Anita, The First Gujarati Movie To Premiere at The Venice Film Festival.

About London India Film Festival

The Bagri London India Film Festival was established in 2010 it aims to showcase and celebrate India Independent Films. The festival has been backed by the Bagri Foundation since 2015. It gained media attention for the first time when it filmed films like Love Sex Aur Dhokha directed by Dibaker Banerjee. It is Europe’s largest South Asian film festival.

Image Credit: globalwoman.co

Arunima Sharma is an intern with SheThePeople.TV