Bagri Foundation London Indian Film Festival: Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition

LIFF presents the prestigious annual Satyajit Ray Short Film Competition in association with the Bagri Foundation.

Programme

Mochi (The Cobbler)
(dir. Saqib Pandor, 19 min, India)
Gopal, a Mumbai cobbler at a railway station, struggles to make ends meet in his minimum wage job. With a growing son, it takes a fine balance to manage the family finances.  It just takes one careless mistake…

Marriage Bazaar
(dir. Vijay Kumar, 12 min, India)
The consequences of female infanticide in Haryana has caused a growing gender imbalance. Increasingly, prospective grooms need to look further afield when choosing a wife who, like Rekha, may be from a different culture and caste. Often these women, far from home, have to deal with racism and suspicion from within their new family units.

Chariot Riders
(dir. Kate Jessop, 5 min, UK.)
13-year-old Ash doesn’t like anything Indian: the food, the clothes, the films. What he does like is spending time with his best friend Kuldeep.

Angelus Novus
(dir. Aboozar Amini, 22 min, UK)
Afghani refugee Ali and his brother have just arrived in Turkey where, surrounded by many other refugees, his family tries to build a new life. The boys earn their living shining shoes. When one day their spot has been taken, their fragile existence and dreams of a better future hang by a thread.

Chhaya
(dir. Debanjan Nandy, 10 min, UK/India)
An old man trapped in a mundane senior centre is living the memory of his beloved wife through his own shadow. But as his past sets in threatening his present, Prakash finds himself facing a difficult question: is he living a mesmerizing but unreal dream or life itself?

Playgrounds
(dirs. Pallavi MD, Shamik Sen Gupta, 18 min, India)
During a game of hide ‘n’ seek, three-year-old Murli hides in an auto rickshaw and falls asleep. He wakes up in a different neighbourhood with an angry man shouting at him in a language he doesn’t understand.

The winner is announced on 21 July at the Closing Night Gala.                          

2016 Short Film Jury: Alka Bagri (Bagri Foundation), Aleem Khan (Film maker), Aditi Khanna (Senior Correspondent, Press Trust of India), Menelik Shabazz (Film maker) & Satwant Gill (LIFF, Jury Chair).