This year the London Indian Film Festival was held on July 12^th. The London Indian Film Festival highlights the very best of independent Indian films. There were lots of good independent films featured this year. One of them was Delhi Belly, with started Imran Khan. This movie is really only appropriate for adults. There is some crude humor and it deals with the question of whether some people are really suited to live a ‘normal life’.

The movie Rang Rasiya (passion of colors) is about a painter who is accused of blasphemy for his eroticized works. The film brings up the question of whether artists are truly free to produce the works they want and where to draw the line between art for art’s sake and commercial art. I think this film is quite appropriate considering that many of the films that were featured in this Festival are innovative and non-mainstream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCyhMzwsCEM

Veetilekkula Vazhi (The Way Home) is about a doctor who carries out the dying wish of one of his patients. To honor the wish, he treks all over India to reunite a boy with his father, who is a terrorist. The trip is all the more important because the doctor’s family was killed by a terrorist group. This film is a story about the sensitive topic of terrorism and how it affects families. It’s a cinematically beautiful film that describes terrorism in a nonjudgmental and no preachy way.

And then there is the movie That Girl in Yellow Boots. The story starts with a half Indian/half British girl who goes to Mumbai to find her biological father. As she searches for her father, the audience will see the seedy parts of Mumbai like the drugpushers, the pimps and gangs. It’s one of those movies that takes a realistic and glaring look at the underground and shady parts of the city of Mumbai. The locations shot in the movie are all real locations, so it’s almost a gritty real life view of the hidden parts of Mumbai.

There were more movies that were featured in the London Indian Film Festival, but these are my personal favorites. All the movies are promising and it really shows that Indian directors are influencing and changing the landscape of cinema. We should all be proud of all the films featured at the Festival, and find ways to support and promote these talented Indian directors, actors, and script writers.