The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF), the country’s most prestigious, longest-running South Asian film festival, announces its movie award categories, esteemed panel of jurors and CLOSING NIGHT FILM. The six-day festival (May 4 to 9) will showcase more than 30 shorts, documentaries and feature films, along with special events, networking parties and Q&A sessions with directors, actors and producers. For the entire festival schedule & locations, please go HERE. To purchase tickets for the gala, buy festival passes or score individual screening tickets, please go HERE.

NYIFF 2015 Award Categories & Nominees Are (Drum Roll, please…):

Best Picture

1. City Lights
2. My Big Fat Bride
3. Gour Hari Dastaan
4. Labour of Love
5. Margarita, with a Straw
6. Saari Raat

Best Actor

1. Ayushmann Khurrana (My Big Fat Bride)
2. Dulal Sarkar (Chotoder Chobi)
3. Rajkumar Rao (City Lights)
4. Vikram Gokhale (Siddhant)
5. Vinay Pathak (Gour Hari Dastaan)
6. Nawazuddin Siddiqui (Haraamkhor)

Best Short

1. Bloody Moustache
2. Hechki
3. Nayantara's Necklace
4. Seek & Hide
5. Zor

Best Screenplay

1. Chauranga
2. Choteder Chobi
3. Haraamkhor
4. Labour of Love
5. Margarita, with a Straw

Best Director

1. Aditya Vikram Sengupta (Labour of Love)
2. Ananth Mahadevan (Gour Hari Dastaan)
3. Aparna Sen (Saari Raat)
4. Hansal Mehta (City Lights)
5. Sharat Katariya (My Big Fat Bride)
6. Shonali Bose (Margarita, with a Straw)

Best Actress

1. Bhumi Pednekar (My Big Fat Bride)
2. Debalina Roy (Chotoder Chobi)
3. Kalki Koechlin (Margarita, with a Straw)
4. Konkana Sen (Gour Hari Dastan)
5. Konkana Sen (Saari Raat)
6. Tannishtha Chatterjee (Rough Book)

Best Documentary

1. A Moment of Misgiving
2. Being Bhaijaan
3. Daughters of Mother India
4. Meet the Patels
5. Placebo

Best Child Actor

1. Archit Dewadhar (Siddhant)
2. J. Vignesh & Ramesh (Kaakaa Muttai)
3. Shameem Khan (Yeh Hai Bakrapur)
4. Shrirang Mahajan (Elizabeth Ekadashi)
5. Soham Maitra & Riddhi Sen (Chauranga)

***Winners in each category will be announced at the closing night awards ceremony on Saturday, May 9 AFTER the closing night film, which will be Yash Raj Films’ MY BIG FAT BRIDE, directed by Sharat Katariya and starring Ayushmann Khuranna & Bhumi Pednakar. It’s a heartfelt story about a mismatched couple trying to find themselves and each other between their own complexes and dysfunctional, yet endearing, families.

NYIFF 2015’s Panel of Jurors Includes (in alphabetical order, by last name):

• Parag Amladi
• Ashish Avikunthak
• Dev Benegal
• Tejaswini Ganti
• Udayan Gupta
• Le Frances Hui
• Poorna Jagannathan
• Joseph Mathew
• Myrna Moncayo-Iyengar
• Claus Mueller
• Muriel (Mike) Peters
• Zenobia Shroff
• Nilita Vachani

For a complete bio and more information on each juror, please go HERE.

About the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC):

The Indo-American Arts Council is a registered 501(c) 3 not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization charged with the mission of promoting and building the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America. The IAAC supports all artistic disciplines in the classical, fusion, folk and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. We work cooperatively with colleagues around the United States to broaden our collective audiences and to create a network for shared information, resources and funding. Our focus is to work with artists and arts organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists and arts organizations from India to exhibit, perform and produce their works here.

About the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF):

The New York Indian Film Festival (originally the IAAC Film Festival) opened their doors in 2001 following the devastation of the September 11attacks on New York City. This festival creates an awareness and better understanding of the people and stories from the Indian Diaspora by bringing the most acclaimed feature films, documentaries, and shorts from that region to America's biggest and most remarkable city. Merchant-Ivory's Shakespearewalla was the festival's Opening Night, while Mira Nair's 'Monsoon Wedding' closed IAAC’s first film festival before its worldwide theatrical release. Since then, the festival has provided first-looks at many acclaimed films, including Deepa Mehta's Oscar-nominated 'Water,' and 'Midnight's Children', Nair's 'The Namesake,' and 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' and the New York Premiere of Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire' which won eight Oscars including Best Picture. Some of the artists who support the festival include Mira Nair, Salman Rushdie, Madhur Jaffrey, Padma Lakshmi, Shabana Azmi, Rishi Kapoor & Neetu Singh Kapoor, Shashi Tharoor, Sarita Chaudhury, Sakina Jaffrey, Anurag Kashyap, Shyam Benegal, Mani Ratnam, Aparna Sen, the late filmmakers Ismail Merchant and Rituparno Ghosh. NYIFF's 15th anniversary will include premiere film screenings, discussions, industry panels, nightly networking parties, special events, an awards ceremony, and red carpet galas. The festival will run May 4th to 9th at a variety of prestigious New York City venues, including the Skirball Center for Performing Arts, the Paris Theatre and the Village East Cinemas. For the latest news, updates and information about The 15th Annual New York Indian Film Festival, presented by The Indo-American Arts Council, please visit www.iaac.us.