Our Bureau
Los Angeles
IFFLA brings to Los Angeles audiences the most exciting and groundbreaking independent cinema from South Asia and its diasporas, and it offers emerging and established filmmakers numerous industry-facing mentorship, educational, and networking opportunities.
IFFLA’s annual festival, now in its 21st year, offers a vibrant program comprising features and shorts, including narrative, documentary, and animated works. The festival showcases films from eight countries in the South Asian subcontinent – Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – as well as their diasporas in the US and worldwide.
Renowned Director Vishal Bhardwaj’s film Khufiya was an Opening Night Gala feature. Festival attendees and Bollywood Film lovers enjoyed the screening of the film Khufia and Q&A afterward.
Joining on the Red Carpet from Los Angeles were Nadadur S. Kumar, Dr. Bharat Patel, Rajendra Vora, Dr. Shubha Jain, Smita Bagla, “3 Idiots” star Omi Vaidya, Svetlana Tulasi, and many more joined the Red carpet with IFFLA team and filmmakers.
Rajendra Vora congratulated Svetlana Tulasi at the Red Carpet for her appearance with an Indian Classical Dance to a Bollywood song at Ukraine’s Got Talent TV, Russia Got Talent TV, Dance Plus, and many more. Svetlana is an Indian classical Kathak and Bollywood dancer, choreographer, and actor with over 100 million views on social media. She was born to a mixed Indian/Russian family in Moscow and now she resides in LA.
In early 2000s Dhaka, Krishna Mehra, played by a terrific, melancholic Tabu, is an Indian intelligence operative laden with guilt, secrets and a repressed identity as a queer woman. When her lover Heena Rehman, also an operative, beguilingly portrayed by Azmeri Haque Badhon, is killed in an attempt to assassinate the Bangladeshi Defense Minister, Mehra, her unit realizes there is a mole in the agency. This sets off a thrilling cat-and-mouse game across three countries and two continents, involving a fellow agent and his ingenuous wife. But really, like the best espionage thrillers, it’s a story of being the queen of your heart versus always having an ace up your sleeve.
Venerated Indian filmmaker and composer Vishal Bhardwaj directs a fierce female-driven ensemble, in the screen adaptation of ‘Escape to Nowhere’, Amar Bhushan’s novel based on real events. Eschewing depictions of women as the femme fatale or the saccharine manipulator, Bhardwaj ensures that these complex ladies subvert the stereotypes they habited earlier in their lives. The slippery and shifting world of Khufiya houses spies galore, even as they remain far from the homes–and loving–they need.
The Opening Night of IFFLA ended with a remarkable response from volunteers, donors, and Film and TV faculties which made a memorable opening.
