A poignant and heartwarming documentary about an Indian woman who walked for 4,000 km over 240 days across India will be the opening movie of this year’s London Indian Film Festival.
“We will be showcasing the unstoppable force that is India’s rich and diverse filmmaking, and of course the festival will be helping to highlight and support COVID charities working in South Asia,” said LIFF Director Cary Rajinder Sawhney.
After the opening night gala with “W.O.M.B. (Women of My Billion)”, the festival will offer a slew of movies and talks under the strands of Young Rebel, which will feature movies by a host of talented emerging filmmakers, and Great British Asian Filmmakers that will honor Asif Kapadia ( The Warrior, Amy, Senna), and writer Hanif Kureishi ( My Beautiful Laundrette, The Buddha of Suburbia).
LIFF 2021 will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of the feel-good hit “Bend It Like Beckham” with an intro by director Gurinder Chadha. The year’s highlights also include on stage “Special In Conversations” with filmmaker Karan Johar along with actresses Jhanvi Kapoor and Shruti Hassan. The festival will also celebrate the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray on his 100th birth anniversary.
LIFF is supported by the British Film Institute (BFI) and funds from the National Lottery. The Bagri Foundation-backed annual film festival will be screening across London, Birmingham, and Manchester until July 4 showing films with English subtitles across several languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Urdu, Malayalam, Marathi, and Gujarati.
Other movies to feature in LIFF 2021 are “Ahimsa: Gandhi The Power of the Powerless”, Bengali drama “Searching For Happiness”, “Ghar ka Pata”, “Aise Hee,” “Brick Lane” and black comedy “Ashes On A Road Trip” among others.
Damian Talbot