The International Kids Film Festival (IKFF) brings its 6th edition to Bengaluru on November 23 at the ASC Centre and College. IKFF, titled a “first-of-its-kind”, is a global film festival presented by School Cinema and organised by LXL Ideas. The festival features 75 award-winning children’s films from 20 countries in 15 languages, hosted from November 14 to November 30 by schools across India.
IKFF presents opportunities to children by showcasing films and hosting online workshops to teach children the various characteristics of filmmaking and holding the World’s largest student filmmaking competition to provide a platform for young filmmakers to exhibit their talents, winners represent India as Jurors at partner festivals.
IKFF 2023 partners with International Festivals including Busan International Kids & Youth FIlm Festival (BIKY), South Korea, Giffoni FIlm Festival, Italy, Children’s Film Festival Seattle and Providence Children’s Film Festival, USA. The festival invites people from across the world as Jury members with personnel such as Alexandros Kostopoulos, Director/ Screenwriter from Greece, R Balki, Filmmaker from India and MArie-Pauline Mollaret, Head of Short Films Committee at Cannes Festival, France.
With 9000 schools in 20 countries hosting IKFF in 2019, the film festival aspires to use Film Pedagogy to present children with the magic of international films, using it as a means of education. The Festival Director of IKFF and MD, LXL Ideas, Syed Sultan Ahmed says that, “Visual storytelling is an essential life skill in a world dominated by audio-visual content. Very few kids get an opportunity to participate in film festivals. So, we at LXL Ideas came up with a simple idea: if ‘Kids don’t go to film festivals, let’s take the festival to the kids.’ This idea gave rise to IKFF, a school-based film festival.” Hence, the festival made its way to India with 7.5 million students participating from 26,000 schools across the country.
