Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) has announced its lineup and we’re excited to see indies (and long-awaited features) up on the big screen. Ahead of the festival, we bring you round up the films that have got us buzzed.
Sold, by actor-producer Emma Thompson and Academy Award Winning director Jeffrey D. Brown, opens the festival. It follows the story of a 13-year-old who comes to India from Nepal in the hope of a bright future only to herself a victim of a prostitution racket, from which she must escape. Keep tissues handy.
Director Rajat Kapoor’s somewhat absurdist and absolutely heartwarming Ankhon Dekhi, which is still basking in rave reviews since its release on March 21, will also travel to the fest. It’s where a middle-class travel agent Bauji (Sanjay Mishra) decides to reject everything he knows about the world to discover the truth first-hand.
Marathi film Fandry, which bagged Best Film award at the Mumbai Film Festival in 2013, and tackles the caste divide also makes an appearance.
Festival favourite, Qissa features a male-heir obsessed Irrfan Khan who raises his daughter as a boy. And in another parent-child drama, Brahmin Bulls, we find estranged father and son (Roshan Seth and Sendhil Ramamurthy) on the rocky road to reconciliation.
Liar’s Dice which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival is the story of Kamala (Geetanjali Thapa), a woman from a small village who hits the road – child and goat in tow – in search of her husband who’s been missing for months. In Anurag Kashyap’s psychological thriller Ugly, a 10-year-old girl goes missing from her father’s car – cue stories of desperate search and police corruption.
Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles is on from April 8 – 13. Indianfilmfestival.org
