JINGO Media, a Dallas and NYC-based PR and events management boutique firm, produces the FIRST-EVER festival of South Asian independent cinema in North Texas over a three-day period. In partnership with the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) and the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF), the Dallas-Fort Worth South Asian Film Festival (DFW SAFF) will showcase 14 curated shorts, documentaries and feature films that focus on issues affecting the South Asian (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) sub-continent, as well as explore the lives and stories of the South Asian Diaspora in the United States. The festival takes place from Friday, February 27 to Sunday, March 1 at the Angelika Film Center in Plano (Shops at Legacy).
“DFW is the fifth largest media market in the country,” says JINGO Media Principal/CEO and DFW SAFF Film Festival Director Jitin Hingorani. “And we’re the only major metropolitan area in the U.S. that DOES NOT have its own South Asian film festival. Given that the South Asian population is growing and thriving in North Texas, it is about time these non-Bollywood, independent films receive a much-needed platform to engage, educate and inspire our savvy, world-cinema-loving audiences.”
The festival’s opening night film is the Texas premiere of Mahesh Pailoor’s poignant and uplifting feature BRAHMIN BULLS. Based in Los Angeles, this father-son drama stars Mary Steenburgen, Justin Bartha, Sendhil Ramamurthy (of Heroes fame) and Indian veteran actor Roshan Seth.
Emma Thompson-produced and Academy Award-Winner Jeffrey D. Brown-directed, the Texas premiere of SOLD is the festival’s centerpiece film about a Nepali girl sex trafficked in India and rescued by a team of Americans journalists, played by Gillian Anderson and David Arquette.
The festival closes with the world premiere of ROUGH BOOK, a controversial look at India’s current education system and how a renegade teacher rebels against rote classroom learning by encouraging her students to think outside the box. Directed by Ananth Mahadevan, produced by Viveck Vaswani and starring the queen of Indian independent film festivals, Tannishtha Chatterjee, this thought-provoking drama has already been endorsed by India’s Education Minister and will be offered “tax-free” to Indian audiences upon its theatrical release.
The festival also boasts compelling shorts and documentaries, women’s programming, LGBT programming and family programming, including an animated children’s film and youth-focused movies. For the entire festival line-up, please visit www.dfwsaff.com. “All-access” festival passes, which provide admission to all 14 films and two after-parties, are on sale for $95 before February 15. Individual screenings range in price from $10 to $13 per person before Feb. 15.
