2008 Indian FIlm Festival of Los Angeles Announces Winners

The 6th Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles announced its 2008 Award winners with Richie Mehta’s AMAL as the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature and Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s FROZEN receiving a Special Mention in the category. Yunus Vally’s THE GLOW OF WHITE WOMEN was named as the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary with Liz Mermin’s SHOT IN BOMBAY receiving a Special Mention.

Atul Sabwarhal’s’s MIDNIGHT LOST AND FOUND won the award for Best Short with Audience Awards going to Manish Acharya’s LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS for Narrative, Christopher Mitchell’s SUPER 30 for Documentary and Preeya Nair’s QUAMAR – WORKING TO LIVE for the Short Film category.

Christina Marouda, IFFLA Director, said, “This year’s slate of films represented the most diverse and wide spectrum of style and art being produced by the Indian filmmaking industry today. This year’s festival took a significant step toward not just presenting the filmmakers works to the public but also becoming an important business portal to India. ”

JURY AWARDS:
BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE: AMAL
DIR: Richie Mehta
Cast: Rupinder Nagra, Vic Sahay, Koel Purie, Roshan Seth, Vic Sahay, Naseeruddin Shah, Seema Biswas

SPECIAL MENTION: FROZEN
DIR: Shivajee Chandrabhushan
Cast: Danny Denzongpa, Gauri, Angchuk, Raj Zutshi, Yashpal Sharma, Shakeel Khan, Shilpa Shukla

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: THE GLOW OF WHITE WOMEN
DIR: Yunus Vally

SPECIAL MENTION: SHOT IN BOMBAY
DIR: Liz Mermin

SHORT: MIDNIGHT LOST AND FOUND
DIR: Atul Sabharwal

AUDIENCE AWARDS:
NARRATIVE: LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS
DIR: Manish Acharya
Cast: Shabana Azmi, Ajay Naidu, Ayesha Dharker, Darshan Jariwala, Samrat Chakrabarti, Michael Raimondi

DOCUMENTARY: SUPER 30
DIR: Christopher Mitchell

SHORT: QUAMAR – WORKING TO LIVE
DIR: Preeya Nair

The six-day festival was populated by more than 6500 film goers, with over 60 filmmakers attending the screenings of their films. Both numbers demonstrated significant growth from the previous year’s edition with the filmmaker total in particular doubling last year’s number.

After reviewing 350 submissions for the festival, the 2008 IFFLA lineup showcased 21 features (16 narrative and 5 documentary) and 12 shorts for a total of 33 films representing 8 countries.