FCCI institutes award for best debut feature at New York Indian Film Festival

NYIFF 2022
Festival director Aseem Chhabra addresses teh audience at NYIFF 2022. Photo courtesy: NYIFF

The oldest and largest Indian film festival in America, the 22-year-old annual New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF), organised by the Indo-American Arts Council, Inc. (IAAC), finally opened up and went hybrid this year, after being forced to be totally virtual in the previous two editions due to the pandemic. Festival director Aseem Chhabra said he hoped that from the next edition onwards the Festival would be entirely offline.

Film Critics Circle of India (FCCI) set up a 3-member critics jury comprising Vijay Sharma, Anil Zankar, and Deepa Gahlot and instituted an award for the best debut feature, this year. NYIFF 2022 was an 8-day affair. Over 60 films in 13 languages were screened. The Festival concluded on May 14 with a red carpet event followed by an in-person conversation between Chhabra and the producer of the closing film ‘The Beatles and India: an enduring love affair’, a music concert by Ragatonic, and the awards ceremony, at the Village East by Angelika cinema hall in New York.

 

AWARD WINNERS | NYIFF 2022
Feature Best Film Shoe Box
Best Director Aditya Vikram Sengupta for Once Upon a Time in Calcutta
Best Actor Jitendra Joshi for Godavari
Best Actress Sreelekha Mitra for Once Upon a Time in Calcutta
Best Child Actor Reyaan Shah & Hiranya Zinzuwadia for Gandhi & Co.
Best Screenplay Powai
FCCI Award for Best Debut Film Jhini Bini Chadariya /The Brittle Thread, directed by Ritesh Sharma
Short Fiction Best Short (Narrative) Succulent
Documentary Best Documentary (Feature) Longing
Best Short (Documentary) Kicking Balls

Photo courtesy: NYIFF

 

Notable personalities at the NYIFF 2022 closing ceremony included actors Arindam Ghosh and Jitendra Joshi; actresses Ami Sheth, Melanie Chandra, and Shreya Navile; film directors  Ajoy Bose, Vijayeta Kumar, Meg Damani, Vikas Khanna, and Ravi Guru Singh; film producer, Reynold D’Silva; Aparna Shewakramani; Tanmayee Mohapatra; editor-publisher of You & I, Huma Latif; IAAC members Preeti Urs, Dharti Desai, Jaishri Kapoor, Anil Bansal, Raj Shahani, Nili Lakhani, Hali Sunil, Venkat Sampath, Carol, Tagore Sundaram, and Nirmal Matoo; the State Bank of India CEO in New York, Tripathy; and the Consul General of India in New York, Randhir Jaiswal.

 

 

 

ALL FILMS | NYIFF 2022
Feature (Narrative) Bhagavadajjukam (Sanskrit), dir. Yadu Vijayakrishnan, 101 mins., 2021
Boomba Ride (Assamese), dir. Biswajeet Bora, 76 mins., 2021
Burqa (Tamil), dir. Sarjun KM, 81 mins., 2021
Deid (Marathi), dir. Omkar Barve, 98 mins., 2022
Demons (Hindi), dir. Rohit Mittal, 96 mins., 2021
Gandhi & Co. (Gujarati), dir. Manish Saini, 101 mins., 2022
Godavari (Marathi), dir. Nikhil Mahajan, 113 mins., 2021
Jhini Bini Chadariya/ The Brittle Thread (Hindi), dir. Ritesh Sharma, 97 mins., 2021
Koli Esru (Kannada), dir. Champa P Shetty, 81 mins., 2022
Mahishasur Marddini (Bengali), dir. Ranjan Ghosh, 118 mins., 2022
Nishiddho/ Forbidden (Malayalam, Bengali), dir. Tara Ramanujan,124 mins. 2021
Once Upon a Time in Calcutta (Bengali), dir. Aditya Vikram Sengupta, 131 mins., 2021
Pedro (Kannada), dir. Natesh Hedge, 108 mins., 2021
Powai (Hindi), dir. Kuldip Patel, 126 mins., 2021
Shoebox (Hindi), dir. Faraz Ali, 98 mins., 2021
The Road to Kuthriyar (Tamil), dir. Bharat Mirle, 115 mins., 2021
Three-Legged Horse (Marathi), dir. Noopur Bora,123 mins., 2021
Waiting for Dawn/ Bhor Er Oppekha (Bengali), dir. Akash Sharma, 77 mins., 2021
Feature (Documentary) 15 Seconds a Lifetime (Hindi, Marathi and English), dir. Divya Kharnare, 62 mins., 2021
If Memory Serves Me Right (English), dir. Rafeeq Ellias, 56 mins., 2021
Kaifinama (Urdu, English), dir. Sumatra Ghosal, 90 mins., 2019
Lords of Lockdown (English, Hindi), dir. Mihir Fadnavis, 120 mins., 2021
Taangh/ Longing (English, Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu), dir. Bani Singh, 100 minutes, 2021
The Beatles and India (English), dir. Ajoy Bose and Peter Compton, 96 mins., 2021
Short (Narrative) 7 Star Dinosor (sic.) Entertainment (Hindi), dir. Vaishali Naik, 20 mins., 2021
A Box of Cuban Cigars (English, Bengali, Hindi), dir. Soumadeep Sen, 21 mins., 2021
Arjun (Marathi), dir. Shivraj Waichal, 15 mins., 2020
Cheepatakadumpa (Hindi), dir. Devashish Makhija, 24 mins., 2021
Cycle (Hindi, Telugu, Oriya, Bengali), dir. Devashish Makhija, 20 mins., 2021
Dal Bhat (Gujarati), dir. Nemil Shah, 29 mins., 2021
Holiday (Hindi), dir. Rahul Nangia, 12 mins., 2020
Keep Punching (Hindi), dir. Kirnay Bhatt, 25 mins., 2020
Kiss (Hindi), dir. Varun Grover, 17 mins., 2021
Kopfkino (Malayalam, English), dir. Veena Bharati, 16 mins., 2021
Man & Wife (Bengali, English), dir. Rahul Roye, 9 mins., 2021
Mintgumri (Hindi), dir. Aakash Chhabra, 23 mins., 2021
Mr. Lawyer (Hindi), dir. Sumit Purohit, 23 mins., 2021
My Mother’s Girlfriend (Marathi), dir. Arun Fulara, 15 mins., 2021
Nafs Said (Hindi), dir. Huma Hussain, 13 mins., 2021
Overbridge (Kannada), dir. Nihar Kapoor and Amshu Chukki, 9 mins., 2020
Pariah (Hindi), dir. Nishant Roy Bombarde, 26 mins., 2021
Raavi (Punjabi), dir. Jasmine Kaur Roy, 14 mins., 2021
Smrisha (English, Malayalam), dir. Shilpa Krishnan Shukla, 30 mins., 2021
Succulent (Hindi, English), dir. Amrita Bagchi, 29 mins., 2021
Swarna (Telugu), dir. Anusha Rao, 29 mins., 2021
The Daughter (Hindi), dir. Soumyak Kanti Debiswas, 16 mins., 2022
The Silent Echo (Nepali), dir. Suman Sen, 15 mins., 2021
The Test (Hindi), dir. Shahnawaz Qadeer, 14 mins., 2020
The Way We Are/ Phir Kabhi (Hindi), dir. Nihit Bhave, 18 mins., 2021
There is No Other Way to Do This (English), dir. Mragendra Singh, 6 mins., 2022
Together (Hindi), dir. Azad Alam, 23 mins., 2021
Vanilla (Hindi), dir. Kanishka Deo, 11 mins., 2021
Short (Documentary) Aakhri Safar/ The Last Journey (Hindi), dir. Suraj Gunjal, 22 mins., 2021
Kicking Balls (Hindi), dir. Priyanka Singh, 36 mins., 2020
Listen With Your Heart (English), dir. Meghna Damani, 27 mins., 2022
Murmurs of the Jungle (Marathi, Hindi), dir. Sohil Vaidya, 20 mins., 2022
Reflections at 29 (English), dir. Tanmaya Shekhar, 6 mins., 2021
The Bat Man and Woman of India (English), dir. Emily Driscoll, 7 mins., 2021
The Flowers and the Gemstones (Tamil), dir. Sriram Raja, 23 mins., 2019
The Spirit of Ganga (English), dir. Natashja Rathore, 17 mins., 2022
Categories
Festival Circuit

Piyush Chauhan is an apple farmer from Simla with an immense interest in films of all sorts, especially, Hindi. He has reviewed Hollywood films in the past for a semi-trade film magazine. And is a certified mountaineer. In his spare time, which isn’t much these days, he imagines climbing the impossible mountains. He dreams of, someday, touching the peak of Everest on his own as well as of introducing himself to popular Indian cinema as an actor-producer.

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