Hyderabad Bengali Film Festival

Hyderabad Bengali Film Festival (HBFF) is a Bengali film festival in the city of Hyderabad and is being organized annually since 2014. The venue of the festival is the Prasad Film Preview Labs, Hyderabad (adjacent to L V Prasad Eye Institute). The first edition of the film festival was held in the year 2014. It is the only curated Bengali film festival in India. The festival is organized by a Hyderabad-based registered Bengali group- Bengalis in Hyderabad (popularly known as BiH). The fourth edition of the HBFF was held from 30 June to 2 July 2017. The fourth edition of the festival screened eight Bengali movies, along with two Telugu movies. All the seasons of the festival were attended by the directors, casts and crews of the movies which were screened, and there are several panel discussions and Q&A sessions with directors organized. The fifth year saw the introduction of short film and documentary section rightly named SEED. The competitive short film section saw more than 50 entries coming from various languages including Sinhalese(Sri Lanka), Bangla (Bangladesh) and other Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malyalam and Bengali. After much deliberation by the Jury, 17 short films were selected and screened. The short film and documentary section was held at the Ramanaidu Film School, Hyderabad. In the documentary section, two documentaries were premiered in the festival. Thy Daughter O' Mother Earth: A documentary on the life & work of the legendary dancer & cultural anthropologist Manjushree Chaki Sarkar was made by noted filmmaker Shekhar Das. Meeting a Milestone (A documentary on India's Shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan) made by another famous filmmaker Goutam Ghose was also premiered at the festival.