The International Children’s Film Festival (IKFF) brings its 6th edition to Bengaluru on November 23. Dubbed “the first of its kind”, IKFF is a global film festival hosted by School Cinema and organized by LXL Ideas. The festival features 75 award-winning children’s films from 20 countries in 15 languages, hosted by schools across India from November 14 to November 30.
IKFF offers opportunities to children by screening films and conducting online workshops to teach children the various qualities of filmmaking, and organizes the world’s largest student film competition, which provides a platform for young filmmakers to showcase their talent, with winners representing India as judges at partner festivals.
IKFF 2023 collaborates with international festivals including Busan International Kids & Youth FIlm Festival (BIKY), South Korea, Giffoni FIlm Festival, Italy, Children’s Film Festival Seattle and Providence Children’s Film Festival, USA. The festival invites people from all over the world as members of the jury with staff like Alexandros Kostopoulos, director/screenwriter from Greece, R Balki, filmmaker from India and MArie-Pauline Mollaret, head of the short film committee at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
With 9,000 schools in 20 countries hosting the IKFF in 2019, the film festival aims to use film pedagogy to introduce children to the magic of international films and use them as a means of education. IKFF Festival Director and MD, LXL Ideas, Syed Sultan Ahmed says, “Visual storytelling is an essential life skill in a world dominated by audiovisual content. Very few children get the opportunity to participate in film festivals. So we at LXL Ideas came up with a simple idea: if ‘kids don’t go to film festivals’, let them. This idea gave birth to IKFF, a school film festival.” Thus, the festival reached India, where 7.5 million students from 26,000 schools across the country participated.
Published – 22 Nov 2023 09:30 IST
