The Indus Valley International Film Festival which premiered in Vrindavan has been garnering a lot of critical acclaim. The fest was inaugurated by MSME Minister of UP Chaudhary Udaybhan Singh and founded by ‘Naad Bhed’ (aired on Doordarshan) director Harsh Narayan.  Incidentally, the festival has some prominent supporters across South Asia including Nandita Das, Mahira Khan and Bobby Haque to name a few.

‘Omkara’ director Vishal Bharadwaj and actor Vinay Pathak (Toba Tek Singh) are actually the crusaders who are promoting the Indus Valley International Film Festival which features films from all across South Asia.

Vishal Bharadwaj avers, “I believe the film festival here is a great initiative and it is important to go beyond the cities of Mumbai and Delhi to nurture and develop talent. Just establishing a film city at Greater Noida will not be sufficient. There is a need to develop talent and creativity locally who can extract and tell stories of the land.” 

The director further added there should be a need to build film schools away from mainstream cities like Delhi to be able to nurture more regional creative talent. 

Vinay Pathak, who was in ‘Challo Dilli’ with Lara Dutta, felt that while the venue Vrindavan has had a lot of creative and historical importance due to its relevance with Krishna, he says, “We wanted to take this beyond just historic context and develop it as a creative hub, hence we brought the traveling film festival to Vrindavan.”  

Vishal Bhardwaj and Vinay Pathak are now gearing up to promote the fourth edition of this festival and are currently seeking submissions for the next one which people can submit at http://www.iviff.com.  The aim of the initiative is to generate employment and opportunities across the board for everyone ranging from directors to dancers and behind-the-scenes workers across South Asia. 

 The festival also provides workshop opportunities for those seeking to go into various areas relating to the film line. During the pandemic last year, the festival featured online the world premiere of a film on Julia Roberts’ guru Neem Karoli Baba called ‘Windfall of Grace’ – as a guru with a wide American following, the film, and the festival was widely enjoyed even by those outside the South Asian diaspora.

Indeed, if we can have Nawazuddin Siddiqui get an Emmy in America, then we can certainly have the world coming to India in all her hues. Way to go!