HONORABLE MENTION: 
Biriyaani (director: Sajin Baabu)

AUDIENCE AWARD FOR BEST FEATURE: 
Fire In The Mountains (director: Ajitpal Singh)

SHORTS 

GRAND JURY PRIZE FOR BEST SHORT: 
Bittu (director: Karishma Dev Dube)

HONORABLE MENTION: 
For Each Other (director: Rima Das)

HONORABLE MENTION: 
Wade (directors: Upamanyu Bhattacharyya and Kalp Sanghvi)

HONORABLE MENTION: 
Nivita Chaliki for her performance in Forever Tonight (director: Swetha Regunathan)

AUDIENCE AWARD FOR BEST SHORT: 
The Song We Sang (director: Aarti Neharsh)

The 2021 features jury was helmed by Milan Chakraborty (Head of Film at Marginal Mediaworks), Nathan Fischer (Founder of Paris based sales agency Stray Dogs), and Jenn Wilson (Co-Manager of the Film Independent Spirit Awards nomination process, and a senior programmer for the year-round member screening series Film Independent Presents).

The 2021 shorts jury was helmed by Tanuj Chopra (Director, Punching at the Sun, Staycation, Showrunner of season 2 of Delhi Crime on Netflix), Nik Dodani (Actor, CBS revival of Murphy Brown, and Alex Strangelove on Netflix), and Sakina Jaffrey (Actor, TNT’s Snowpiercer, and Defending Jacob on Apple TV+).

Closing Night Q&A

IFFLA 2021 closed with Sthalpuran (Chronicle of Space) by Akshay Indikar, the Marathi film that premiered at Berlinale 2020 and has captured the hearts of audiences at festivals around the world for its breathtaking minimalist exploration of the inner life of its young protagonist.
Long-time IFFLA alum Anurag Kashyap joined Indikar in a Q&A discussion, putting together an exciting up and coming independent filmmaker with one of the most celebrated independent filmmakers of our generation.


The Awards Ceremony and Closing Night are available to stream for passholders in California and India, and will be released on the IFFLA YouTube channel next week. 

A BIG thank you to our audiences & supporters! See you in 2022!

A big thank you to our sponsors and patrons who help us carry through with our vision of bringing the Indian cinema to Los Angeles!

We are grateful to the talented filmmakers who shared their films with us. We thank our staff for their unflinching effort and professionalism in a challenging year. And of course, we thank our audiences, who tuned in from all over California and India, watched, loved and spread the word about our films. We hope to see you next year for our 20th anniversary!

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