The Manchester Indian Film Festival will return at the end of the month, with a packed programme of films being screened all over the city. The event, which made its debut in Manchester last year, runs for 12 days from June 25, incorporating venues like HOME, Everyman and the Ducie Street Warehouse.
The festival’s director, Cary Rajinder Sawhney MBE, said: “A big personal thank you to our audiences in Manchester who, in spite of difficult times due to the pandemic last year, welcomed us to the city with so much warmth and support. Following that success, we are very excited to return in 2022 with an exciting, bigger, high impact festival programme featuring film premieres, documentaries, and Q&As.”
The festival will start with a launch event at the Carlton Club on June 21, with a screening of British Asian short Yaha Waha, a 30-minute documentary by Manchester born director and street photographer Sarah Li which centres on the experience of being second or third generation British Asian.
The official opening night will then see a screening of Little English at HOME, the debut of director Pravesh Kumar and starring Bend It Like Beckham’s Ameet Channa, telling the story of a dysfunctional Punjabi family.
Other events will include Too Desi Too Queer, at Home, an evening of shorts exploring and representing South Asian LGBTQIA+ communities with films from directors Shiva Raichandani and Hetain Patel, and a screening of 1991’s Mississippi Masala starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhary, to mark the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of Asian people from East Africa.
As well as screenings and Q&A sessions, there will also be the Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition, which will showcase new and emerging talent, while the festival will wind up with Super-Fan: The Nav Bhatia Story, the uplifting documentary about Nav Bhatia, Delhi-born super-fan of the Toronto Raptors, who attended every single home game for 15 years, with a Q&A with the man himself after the screening, hosted by the Manchester Giants.
The festival is affiliated with both the London Indian Film Festival and the Birmingham Indian Film Festival, and is also supported by the BFI. For details, and to buy tickets, head for the Manchester Indian Film Festival website.
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