Indian Film Festival Of Melbourne 2020

IFFM Team

IFFM Festival Director - Mitu Bhowmick Lange

Mitu Bhowmick Lange is the Director & Founder of Mind Blowing Films. She is also the Director of Mind Blowing World, which is an independent film distribution company that specialises in the distribution of quality local content to Australian, New Zealand and Fiji audiences.

Mitu Bhowmick Lange is one of the most renowned names contributing to the global outreach of Indian cinema in the past decade. She is the Festival Director of the Indian Film Festival - Bollywood and Beyond and the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne.

Mitu began her career in Bombay where for six years she directed several TV shows including entertainment, news and fashion magazine programs and a daily breakfast show for leading channels including BBC World, Star Plus, Zee TV and Sony TV.

Since living in Australia, Mitu has produced and introduced several Indian productions to Australia, including producing 13 episodes shot in Australia of India’s number 1 daily television serial Kahani Ghar Kii (similar to Neighbours), Bollywood film Koi Aap Saa and blockbusters like Salaam Namaste, Chak De India, Bachna Aye Haseeno, Main Aurr Mrs Khanna, Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic, Love Aaj kal and several leading television commercials with international cricketers made for the Indian market. She also produced the film Spice Girls of India, which was screened at the London Feminist Film Festival.

In 2016, Mitu produced the multi award-winning documentary, Raising the Bar which was directed by renowned Indian filmmaker, Onir. The film depicts the trials, tribulations and joys of six individuals from Australia and India with Down Syndrome who meet the World Down Syndrome Conference in Chennai, India.

In 2017, Mitu received the Jill Robb Award from Film Victoria recognising her achievements, leadership and mentorship of other women from the sector.

In 2018, Mitu designed and curated an Australian film showcase at the 2018 Kolkata International Film Festival. The showcase focused on 100 years of Australian Cinema with a poster exhibition and film screenings, as well as a retrospective of Phillip Noyce Films and the best of Australian films. The festival hosted guests such as Simon Baker, Phillip Noyce, Jill Bilcock, Sue Maslin, Garth Davis and Benjamin Gilmore and had over 120,000 attendees. She continues to curate films from Australia and New Zealand for the International Film Festival of India in Goa and the Kolkatta International Film Festival.

In 2018, Mitu was appointed to the Board of Film Victoria, becoming the first Indian in Australia to be offered this prestigious role.

In 2019, Mitu produced a music video called ‘Ode to love’ for World Down Syndrome Day to celebrate the love between 20 different fathers and their daughters across two continents. The video has already had over 400,000 views and reached over 57 million people.

IFFM Festival Co Director - Bidyut Dumra

His career in media started in 1995 in India while auditioning as a contestant for a TV quiz-show and ending up as a question writer instead. He hesitantly resolved himself to the fact that his place in the industry seemingly belonged behind the camera rather than in front of it. From TV Production he eventually made the leap to full-feature films in 2005, since then working on productions like, 'Salaam Namaste', 'Chak De India' and 'Bachna Aye Haseeno'.

With corporate experience in multinational media companies, such as, Fremantle Productions and Village Roadshow, he is now a Director at Mind Blowing Films and is based in Hong Kong. He is still waiting for a breakthrough character & script to propel his acting ambitions.Bidyut is the Festival Co Director of the Indian Film Festival - Bollywood and Beyond - ANZ.

IFFM Festival Curator - Uma da Cunha

Uma da Cunha's work in cinema spans programming, writing and casting. Her career started in 1974 with the Directorate of Film Festivals, Govt. of India. In 1978, she set out on her own, organizing film festivals and related events in India and abroad, writing for leading newspapers and publications, casting for films such as Deepa Mehta's 'Water', Mira Nair's ‘Kamasutra’, Jane Campion's 'Holy Smoke', Dev Benegal's 'English, August' and Ashutosh Gowariker's 'Lagaan'.

She has assisted major festivals such as those at Cannes, Berlin and Venice and more recently, Toronto and Busan. As well as, been Founder-Advisor to several Indian film festivals held abroad (London, Los Angeles, Stuttgart). Uma has also held Indian film sessions at New York's Museum of Modern Art, The Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Image. In 1966 she edited Montage - A Monograph on Satyajit Ray. In 2009, she served on the International jury for Cannes's Un Certain Regard. She has programmed a section, now called 'Discovering India', at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival with Star, ever since its inception.

In October 2018, she launched the organisation On Global Screens, to support quality cinema through services including subtitling in English, casting, programming, and festival consultancy. At its forefront is the journal On Global Screens (formerly Film India Worldwide), focused on India's independent and regional cinema movement, for which she is editor and publisher. Uma currently writes on film festivals for the online daily newspaper TheCitizen.in.

IFFM Legal

Julia Adams (Shiff & Company Lawyers) and Mannie Verma (Vision Solicitors)

IFFM Festival Publicist

Miranda Brown (Miranda Brown Publicity) and Abhishek Thukral (Hardly Anonymous)

IFFM Festival Team