Five days of sold-out feature, shorts, and documentary screenings of South Asian films in partnership with the Film Society at Lincoln Center, nightly red-carpet events, film industry panels and celebrity-packed after parties all came to a close on Sunday, November 14 with a prestigious awards ceremony at the SVA Theater in Manhattan, following the closing night film “Cooking with Stella.” The longest-running, most prestigious Indian film festival in the country, the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film Festival, recognized noteworthy directing, writing, and acting in the following categories:

• Best Picture – “The Well (Vihir)”
• Best Actor – Ajay Naidu, “Ashes”
• Best Actress – Seema Biswas, “Cooking with Stella”
• Best Director – Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, “Shor”
• Best Screenplay – Rituparno Ghosh, “Memories in March”
• Best Documentary – “Ganesh, Boy Wonder,” Director Srinivas Krishna
• Best Short Film – “Charulata…A Sequel…of the Life Untold!” Director Sangeeta Padmanabhan
• NYU @ MIAAC: Mobile Bollywood – Directors: Anna South, Casey Knight, and Raymond Wei
• Special Achievement Award for Significant Contribution to the Globalization of Indian Music – presented to Oscar and Grammy-award winning composer A.R. Rahman and accepted by director Mani Ratnam

The jury comprised of some of the most well-known critics, actors, directors, and academics in world cinema including: Claus Mueller, Kathleen Carroll, Jerry Carlson, Madhur Jaffrey, Parag Amladi, Ashish Avikunthak, Vinay Chowdhry, Udayan Gupta, Poorna Jagannathan, Kavery Kaul, Joseph Mathew-Varghese, Zenobia Shroff, Ingrid Scheib-Rothbart, Parvez Sharma, Rahul Bose, Wayne Sharpe, and Nilita Vachani.

Celebrities who attended the 10th annual festival included: Mani Ratnam, Suhasini Maniratnam, Mira Nair, Dilip Mehta, Seema Biswas, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Madhur Jaffrey, Ekta Kapoor, Tusshar Kapoor, Padma Lakshmi, Rahul Bose, Salman Rushdie, Aasif Mandvi, Samrat Chakrabarti, Manu Narayan, Tannishtha Chatterjeee, Seema Biswas, Ajay Naidu, Arun Vaidyanathan, Sarita Choudhry, Sanjoy Nag, Srijit Mukherjee, and many others.

Asiance attended and would recommend the following films: “Ashes", "Japanese wife" and "Cooking with Stella".

For more information on the films, please visit www.miaacfilmfest.org

Photos by www.michaeltoolan.com