In its 14th year, the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) returns with new innings from May 5 – 10, 2014. NYIFF is the oldest, most prestigious film festival screening premieres of feature, documentary and short films made from, of and about Indian subcontinent in the independent, art-house, alternate and Diaspora genres. The festival is presented by The Indo-American Arts Council, which is a registered not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization charged with the mission of promoting and building the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America.

Anurag Kashyap, Rahul Bhatt, Mohan Agashe, Aparna Sen, Gurinder Chadha, Shahana Goswami, Madhur Jaffrey, Sakina Jaffrey, Ambassador Dnyaneshwar Mulay, Ambassador Vijay Nambiar and many other renowned guests will be attending the festival this year.

The opening night of the festival, May 5, 2014 will showcase the film ‘Ugly’ which has actor Rahul Bhatt and directed by the ace director Anurag Kashyap. A post-screening discussion will be held with Rahul Bhatt and Anurag Kashyap. May 10, 2014 will screen ‘Goynar Baksho’, a Bengali film for the closing night of the festival. A post-screening discussion will be held with director Aparna Sen.

The venue for the opening and closing night of the festival will be Skirball Center for Performing Arts, La Guardia Place at Washington Square Park, New York City. All other screenings, industry panel discussions and special events will be at Village East Cinema, 2nd Avenue at 12th Street, New York City. Much acclaimed film LAKSHMI directed by director Nagesh Kukunoor too will be screened at the festival.

The film festival will be showcasing 34 films and will screen 23 narratives along with 11 documentaries which will highlight various cinemas of India’s different regions – Marathi, Bengali and 2 films from North East India.

The festival’s Marathi films include ‘Postcard’, multiple-award winning film ASTU and National Award Winning film ‘Fandry’. With this initiative, NYIFF will be featuring regional cinema for the first time since its inception, giving it a pathway and motivating the need and significance of such cinema. Additionally, the festival covers cinemas from the neighboring South Asian countries – four films by Pakistani filmmakers, two from Sri Lanka – a feature and a documentary, and one from Nepal.