Film Festival Boom: Will It Create Space For Indie Voices Or Is It Just A Glamorous Racket?

Today, the Ocean Film Festival docks at the Mumbai Zoo with dedicated screenings, knowledge-sharing sessions and an exclusive masterclass with filmmaker Dhaniya Pilo from 9 am to 2 pm, followed by a sunset sail at the Gateway of India. Ecolfolks and NFDC’s day-long partnership celebrates the city’s connection with the sea, and through curated costal narratives like Khalasis of Malabar, raises environmental awareness with special focus on Maharashtra’s maritime heritage.  

Last month, Selvaggia Velo, founder of River to River: Florence Indian Film Festival, joined hands with Nina Lath Gupta, founder of the Chandigarh-based Cinévesture International Film Festival and CinéV Film Markets, and Sridhar Rangayan, founder of the LGBTQIA+ festival Kashish, to add the Waterfront Indie Film Festival (WIFF) to this growing universe of film festivals. The brainwave of festival director Deepa Gehlot, WIFF is a boutique festival showcasing indie cinema across generations and genres in Mumbai’s Aram Nagar.

“Besides providing a screening platform and a unique space for interaction, which is at the other end of the spectrum from Bollywood, we’re also planning a marketplace to help parallel cinema practitioners and young filmmakers commercialize their work,” informs filmmaker Vinta Nanda. One of WIFF’s founders, she’s enthused by the response to two shorts, P For Paparazzi and Thursday Special, at its first monthly engagement in March leading up to the festival in October.   

From Indian film festivals in LAs, New York and London to those across India, like the Himalayan Film Festival in Ladakh, Bring Your Own Film Festival in Puri, Red Lorry Film Festival in Mumbai and Chambal International Film Festival in Kota, we will soon have festivals not just in every city, but every gully. Smriti Kiran, former Artistic Director of MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, recalls that one of their objectives was to make the festival accessible by diversifying screening venues across the city and launching the year-round programme to build engagement with the audience throughout the year.

The founder and director of Polka Dots Lightbox, she believes film festivals sprouting across Mumbai, especially in distant suburbs like Thane and Navi Mumbai, increase the cultural currency of the city. They bring cinema and creators to the doorstep of the audience, familiarising them with new filmmakers and newer ways of story-telling. “Curatorial heft, stable funding, specificity of purpose and identification of target audience are instrumental in lending credibility to a festival. Having many festivals keeps the city healthy by fostering community, giving avenues to people to step out of the house and spend device-free time, and also push local talent to future paying viewers,” says Smriti, who last December curated and created the industry programme for the Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival in Guwahati. In its 10th year, BVFF, the biggest festival in the Northeast, facilitates cultural exchanges and creative dialogue with industry professionals from across Asia. It also ensures cinephiles and creators from the region don’t have to travel to Mumbai to watch Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As light or hear Abhishek Chaubey, Anvita Dutt and Tigmanshu Dhulia talk filmmaking.

Last year, Renuka Shahane was at Tasveer, the only Oscar-qualifying South Asian Film Festival, with Dhhaavpatti (Loop Line), an eight-minute Marathi short she’s written, directed and produced. The actress-filmmaker, who believes festivals are great for networking and striking deals, realizing it would be difficult to find distributors for an animation film with mature content in India, took the festival route. “I went beyond the big five and Oscar-qualifying festivals and was encouraged when from Atlanta and Seattle to New Zealand and Iceland, my film was accepted by all festivals validating my choice of subject and presentation,” she exults.

However, having spent a lot, Renuka advises indie filmmakers to prudently choose from the top 50 festivals, and if their travel and accommodation is sponsored, attend in person to maximize benefits. Loop Line was the opening film at Tasveer, with Iram Parveen Bilal’s Wakhri, and Renuka not only got to watch and engage with a live audience, but returned with two awards, for Best Animation and Best Short Narrative Honorable Mention. “Awards create a buzz, get you good press and even distributors. You can also pitch your next project to producers there,” she reasons.

National Award-winning filmmaker Praveen Morchhale, whose 2018 film Widow of Silence debuted at the Busan International Film Festival and was screened at 35 festivals, including Rotterdam, Gothenburg, Seattle and Kolkata, acknowledges that they help indie filmmakers catch the eye of big producers/studios and distributors. He however rues that the ecosystem has changed post-Covid even at big fesrivals. “Today, despite over 100 film festivals in India, barring a few like IFFI, MAMI, Kerala, Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati and Bengaluru, most lack credibility and audience, luring filmmakers with fake narratives and awards to collect submission fees,” Morchhale grouses.

From a platform for alternate cinema, many festivals today have embraced mainstream films and become celebrity-spotting events. Filmmaker Nikkhil Advani, who’s struck a fine balance between mainstream and meaningful cinema, states the red carpet should not be mistaken for the film festival, reasoning that all films in competition are invited to walk the red carpet. “Celebrity walks, on the other hand, are a means for festivals to make some money other than from their usual donors/funders (which they should). For independent filmmakers, the festival route is still a potent and powerful one to get their creative voices heard. For mainstream filmmakers, it’s a way to massage their egos. The genuine cinephile knows that. Do they like it? Well, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” Nikkhil concludes with a smile.