MIACC Film Festival concluded at the
Lincoln Center last night with a
perfect Bollywood ending.
With tons of Desi and ABCD entries with a Bengali infusion, the break out movie of the festival was a little known film that swept the awards - three! - including Best Actress for Tannishtha Chatterjee and Best Director for Joseph Mathew-Varghese (shown above). The film, Bombay Summer, about conflicting needs of family and life in modern India, had only one screening, and that in a tiny, matchbox theatre on the Upper West Side, but the unknown flick beat out top-shelf movies by heavy-hitters such as Anurag Kashyap, Priyadarshan, Shyam Benegal and Dipti Naval. An utter shock! Even the director himself was surprised!
Aasif Mandvi (center) won Best Actor for Today's Special seen here with all the film stars who attended the closing night of the MIAAC Festival.
IACC's Aroon Shivdasani congratulates Joseph Mathew-Varghese for his clean sweep with the awards and promised to throw a Champagne-bash for his winning team!
Dipti Naval's debut as a director was a film called Do Paise Ki Dhoop Char Aane Ki Baarish with comeback-queen Manisha Koirala.
Actor-activist Rahul Bose makes a point to Acclaimed Director Shyam Benegal on the walk to the after-party.
Singer/songwriter Siddhartha Khosla of Goldspot the official band for the opening night with his fan club at the after-party.
Publisher Lakhinder Vohra with an Afghani budding actress at the after-party. Bollywood Star Sanjay Suri is in the sideline.
Mira Nair and Anurag Kasyap gave out the Best Director award.