IFFI 2025: A celebration of influence, innovation, and India

Every edition of IFFI has been a huge leap forward for cinema. The platform has served as the perfect jugalbandi of creativity, excellence, diversity, insights, ideas, and innovation.

- CHAITANYA K. PRASAD

Every year, it gives the image and brand of India an extra punch, reinforcing our soft power and global cultural imprint. IFFI offers cinephiles a vibrant, living architecture of cinema that one can relish, absorb, and get lost in. No other festival in the world quite matches the matrix of variety, the interweaving of the old and the contemporary, the grand and the intimate. It is a cinematic sanctum where legacy breathes beside experimentation. The idea of wholesome entertainment expands in meaning each year, as IFFIGoa transforms into a City of Cinema, its streets echoing with storylines, its venues pulsing with the heartbeat of storytelling through the lens of creators whose instinct for deep thought is unprecedented.

The festival's sister platform, the WavesBazaar, reinforces the power of collaboration in the evolving landscape of filmmaking. More than a market, it is a cultural junction for filmmakers, producers, sales agents, and dreamers, an intellectual and artistic space where ideas meet investment, and stories cross borders. Together, IFFI and Waves FilmBazaar capture the contours of New India, a nation that tells stories not just with emotion but with cutting-edge technology, market wisdom, and strategic global positioning. NFDC continues to highlight cinema not merely as entertainment, but as a vehicle of progress, diplomacy, and development, a shared language of partnership among nations, makers, and markets.