Welcome to the Indian Film Festival of Ireland – IFFI 2010.

I would like to welcome you to the inaugural Indian Film Festival of Ireland at the Swan Cinema Rathmines. Indian films are now much closer to you than ever before. I have brought Indian film to the Irish cinema a decade ago have theatrically exhibited over five hundred films over the years in Ireland. It was quite natural progression for Bollywood Ireland Ltd, my company to organically plant another seed in the form of dedicated Indian film festival. To make it more mainstream and educate people on the global appeal and popularity of Indian cinema. Film festival seemed to me the obvious platform to achieve this goal. I have created three specific strands in this festival, director in focus is devoted to Prakash Jha, a prolific and highly acclaimed director of the Indian cinema, with opening and closing film, there is a remake trend in Indian cinema, the Indian diasporas’ film makers’ slot, the début film director Sangeeta Dutta from London, and we have mini retrospective of the rising Indian film star Gul Panag. We are proud to have four directors this years to introduce their films to the audience, Prakash Jha will introduce his latest film Rajneeti to the audience, Suhail Tatari will introduce his début film Summer 2007, Sangeeta Dutta will introduce her début film Life Goes On, and an emanate Indian film and dialogue writer Atul Tiwari will be around for the various film seminar sessions. There are 22 films old and new, there are three seminars and one master class in collaboration with the FAS screen training Ireland. 

There will be a gala charity dinner, in the aid of a full time educational orphanage in India, on the 26^th June at Hilton Hotel, charlimont with live Indian classical dance performance. This is a social corporate responsibility element that the festival has inbuilt right from the very start of the festival.

I am really looking forward to see you all at the festival.

Siraj Zaidi
Festival Director