SAFFA 2023 ends on a high note with 'Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway' as the closing night film!

by: Achala Datar - SAFFA Team member!

19th March 2023, last day of SAFFA. Over a year of Zoom meetings and phone calls and we were almost at the end of the festivities. Screening short films and documentaries on the previous day was a huge success, so we had to make sure we ended the festival with a bang.

As they say, when the stars are aligned, the magic happens. Our festival team was searching for a closing film for many months. There were some amazing films in consideration but finally, a stellar cast of Rani Mukerji and Anirban Chowdhary, helmed by a female director, Ashima Chibber and a story which deals with the universal language of motherhood, Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway was voted by everyone as our closing night film.

With Rani herself sending best wishes for the success of our festival, we knew we had a winner on our hands.

The closing night was a SOLD-OUT event, and we even found a few people sitting on the stairs and make do chairs in the theatre. There were no seats left for the core festival team to sit on.

The true success of a film and the filmmaker is when you experience pin-drop silence in the theatre after the end credits roll. There wasn’t a single soul in the audience who had anything remotely negative to say about the film. They relished the acting, direction, emotions, and the music of the film so much they were raring to watch it again in the cinemas.

The evening went well, the film was a super success and the team...what can I say, we were overjoyed by the support we had received over the 3 days of our inaugural festival and are already planning for the next edition.

The South Asian Film Festival was organised in Sydney, Australia from 17-19 March 2023. The SAFFA team comprised of Dr Vikrant Kishore, Vivek Asri, Taneem Mannan, Rashmi Ravindran, Achala Datar, Ali Sayed, Gary Patni, and Abbas Zaheer,

SAFFA Jury members were - actor-director Vipin Sharma, actor/filmmaker Arka Das, documentary filmmaker Emma Macey, and eminent cinematographer Arindam Bhattacharjee.

The advisors of the festival were - Ashok Purang (Creative Director), Longinus Fernandes (Bollywood Dance Director, and Anurag Sharma (GM Holiday Inn, Paramatta).