The London Bengali Film Festival (LBFF) opened for submissions on September 7 2015. LBFF is an annual celebration of films from or about the Bengali Diaspora. The three day festival will be held in London with special guests and talks, followed by a red carpet film awards ceremony on the fourth day, thus making it the largest Bengali film event in the world, outside of Bengal.
“Mainstream films have a global audience, but global stories also need to be seen by the mainstream audience. The London Bengali Film Festival does exactly that,” stated Munsur Ali, founder and CEO of LBFF.
Expected to take place on February 21, 2016, to coincide with International Mother Language Day, the audience will both be Bengali and non Bengali, looking for alternative artistic cinema, telling unique and untold stories or stories re-told from another point of view. Their goal is to get these films to the mainstream audience and on to the international platform, while also bringing the rich, artistic, historical and modern culture of Bengal and Bengali experiences to the big screen.
An international team made up of individuals, organisations and film personalities will be on board to facilitate and support the festival, from the UK, to India, Bangladesh and beyond. Judges will include film makers, critics (media), distributors with the event’s education partner being the London Metropolitan University, including the heads of the film department. LBFF welcome films that are commercial and non commercial, independent and artistic.
For submissions log onto www.lbff.co.uk. Films do not have to be made in the Bengali language, but must have English subtitles. They must also fit in at least one of the categories:
Writer or director or producer must be Bengali or have Bengali heritage (any nationality) OR
The main character must be Bengali OR
The story must be set or be about Bengal or an issue affecting the Bengali Diaspora
Munsur Ali, the founder of the London Bengali Film Festival (LBFF) is a British Bangladeshi film maker and also the CEO of the Limelight Film Awards (running for 9 years), who has been working in film and media for the last 10 years. “As audiences become more global for film markets so should be the stories that share other experiences. The London Bengali Film Festival does exactly that,” says founder Munsur Ali.
