NYIFF 2018 to honor Shashi Kapoor, Sridevi

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NEW YORK – The 2018 New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) will be honoring two Bollywood stars: actor Shashi Kapoor who passed away in December 2017 and actress Sridevi whose recent sudden demise shook Bollywood fans all over the world.

In honor of Kapoor, NYIFF will screen two of the actor’s Hollywood films; Shakespeare Wallah and Heat and Dust, while Sridevi’s 2012 comeback film English Vinglish will be screened in her honor, according to a press release.

“Shashi Kapoor, as far as I am concerned, was one of India’s most enigmatic personalities, an actor who straddled the worlds of commercial Hindi cinema, theatre and small-budget art movies; who was, at once, an earnest householder and a committed star. Our cinematic tribute at NYIFF to this Hollywood/Bollywood legend is also a way for us to simultaneously recognize the incredible directorial achievements of recent Academy Award winner James Ivory,” said Aseem Chhabra, the director of NYIFF and the author of the book “Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, The Star,” in a statement.

English Vinglish was shortlisted as India’s official entry for the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category as the film earned global acclaim at several international festivals while Sridevi was hailed as the “Meryl Streep of India.”

The festival will also screen Autobiography of a Princess, starring New York author and chef Madhur Jaffrey, as part of its Merchant-Ivory Retrospective.

The festival will open with the U.S. premiere of Ravi Jadhav’s Marathi language film Nude, which is about a woman who becomes a nude model at an art school to make her 12-year-old son’s dreams come true after her husband leaves her, and will close with the New York premiere of veteran NYIFF director Hansal Mehta’s Omerta, a biopic on the Islamic fundamentalist Omar Saeed Sheikh, starring Bollywood actor Rajkumar Rao.

The North American premiere of Miransha Naik’s Konkoni language film Juze, known as a ‘Slum Landlord,’ will be the centerpiece of the festival.

The complete lineup for the festival will be revealed soon and the NYIFF will run from May 7 to 12 at the Village East Cinemas in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

“NYIFF is known around the world for its top-notch, out-of-the-box programming, and this year is no different. The New York audience is sophisticated, well-traveled, educated and discerning; as such, our content reflects what we think will resonate with the cinephiles of this cosmopolitan city and will keep them coming back for more,” said Aroon Shivdasani, the founder of NYIFF.