Indian Film Festival of Houston Celebrates Its 15th Anniversary

Still from the movie ‘Ek Dam’

HOUSTON: The Annual Indian Film Festival of Houston (IFFH), begun by its Founder and Executive Director Sutapa Ghosh in 2009, keeps getting better and better.  This quality event screens features, shorts, and documentary film with Q & A sessions with filmmakers.  There are bonuses as well.  No wonder IFFH was voted as the “Best Film Festival of Houston” by the Houston Press.  The Houston Chronicle has also listed IFFH as one of the Top 4 events in the first quarter of this year.

Partnering with the Asia Society Texas Center proved to be a beneficial collaboration for both non-profit organizations.  Films are shown in the state-of-the art Brown Theater, and the beautiful building lends itself to having live entertainment, as well as cocktail and food receptions.  Celebrating its 15th anniversary, this year IFFH will add a black-tie sit-down dinner along with awards given for the best films in the three categories.

Still from the movie ‘The Storyteller’

Several filmmakers—directors and actors—will be present, along with Consuls General, Vice Consuls and other dignitaries.  The audience includes attendees from Houston, surrounding cities and states, and even other parts of the world.  People have come from as far away as Mexico, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Argentina, and Morocco, to name a few, as the festival’s reputation has spread globally.

IFFH is an internationally-recognized competitive film festival.  Several of the productions shown here have gone on to win other international awards at the Oscars, Sundance, Toronto, Cannes, Berlin, and Busan.

Audiences are in for a treat, as the selections this year include the World Premiere of Tikdam, a feature film set in a small town.  It dwells on lessons learned along the way when the father migrates with his children to a larger city where he hopes to earn a living.  The two short films are also World Premieres.  Preet is a psychological drama about newlywed who escapes her sexually abusive past and finds refuge in New York City through a childhood friend.  It showcases the trauma and mental turmoil of a survivor in society. The Counterpart has a new twist on the story of two childhood friends who fall in love with the same girl. Betrayal by one of them causes a major psychological breakdown of the other who leaves town. He returns two years later and gradually reveals his true intentions.

The second feature film is The Storyteller, based on the character “Uncle Tarina” who appears in short stories by the incomparable Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray.  After retiring from being a printer, Tarina answers an advertisement calling for a storyteller to go to the opposite side of India. Thinking that it is for a job in a school, he’s surprised to find that his employer is a wealthy businessman who has insomnia and wants Tarina to tell stories to help him fall asleep.  What happens six months later changes both the story and its teller.  Two outstanding documentaries round out the selections for this milestone anniversary year.

You may see a listing of this year’s films at www.iffhinc.org.  We invite you to join us for film screenings Thursday and Friday, February 23-24 from 4:00 pm-9:00 pm. and for the Awards Dinner from 6:00 pm-9:00 pm on Saturday, February 25, 2023.