The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles has unveiled the full program for its third annual Industry Days forum, a two-day event designed to connect South Asian film and television creatives with Hollywood executives and companies. The forum runs April 24-25 at Landmark Sunset Hollywood.
Executives and creatives attending this year’s forum represent Color Creative, Film Independent, HBO, Jaya Entertainment, Library Pictures International, MACRO, Maharani Productions, Marginal Mediaworks, Netflix, NBC, Universal, Onyx, South Stack Studios, Sundance Institute and Zero Gravity Management, among others.
Industry Days producer Megha Kadakia said: “There’s an incredible depth of storytelling coming out of South Asian and diasporic creatives right now. IFFLA Industry Days is about creating the space for those stories to connect with the right partners, so they can travel, scale, and reach the audiences they’re meant to.”
Now in its second year, IFFLA Connect presents a curated group of South Asian and diasporic film and television projects and matches them with Hollywood executives who can assist with their development and onward journey. The six projects selected this year are Keshni Kashyap’s “The Lie”; Aranya Sahay’s “Mayapuri”; Ambarien Alqadar’s “Nisa,” produced by Neeraj Churi, Sharib Khan, Vikas Kumar and Eugene Sun Park; Abhish Raghavan’s “The Reagan Doctrine,” produced by Steven Snyder; Soham Mehta’s “Remember Ivy Court,” written by Jonathan John and Mehta and produced by Rajiv Maikhuri and Craig Stovel; and Mridu Chandra’s “Saund vs Cochran.”
The Launchpad Pitch Competition returns with six finalists who will present in-development projects to a panel of industry experts and a live audience, with one project taking home a $10,000 development grant. The finalists are: Amarik Singh Khosa’s TV series “Blind Tiger”; Neha Dutta’s TV series “Dead Serious with Maya and Momo”; Monisha Dadlani’s feature project “The Fiddler”; Maryam Mir’s feature project “Sapna”; Raj Krishna and Sudhanshu Saria’s feature project “Silverfish”; and Priyanka Krishnan and Raman Nimmala’s feature project “Thottal Poo Malarum (Flowers Bloom When Touched).”
Mentors for the competition include Tanuj Chopra, showrunner and executive producer of “Delhi Crime” seasons 2 and 3; actor-writer-director Agam Darshi (“Donkeyhead”); producer-director-writer Shruti Ganguly; writer-director Ravi Kapoor (“Patel,” “Four Samosas”); writer-director Meera Menon (“Didn’t Die”); and Sanjay Shah, showrunner and executive producer of “Everybody Still Hates Chris.”
The One-on-One Program, a fixture of the forum since 2004, gives festival filmmakers direct access to studio, production, distribution and agency executives through a series of brief individual meetings.
Three panel discussions round out the programming. An animation-focused conversation moderated by Megha Davalath of Netflix Animation Studios examines how South Asian intellectual property can extend across streaming, gaming, publishing and merchandise. A gaming panel gathers developers, narrative designers and producers to consider what the interactive entertainment sector offers South Asian creators looking to build culturally grounded worlds for global audiences. A third panel, presented by Kinema, takes stock of where independent film distribution stands in 2026, with filmmakers discussing how they are combining event-based and direct-to-audience approaches with more conventional sales and streaming routes.
South Stack Studios will present a masterclass examining how filmmakers can sharpen and communicate their creative vision across the range of materials — pitches, loglines, decks — that determine how a project is received in the marketplace.
The festival also announced a change to its opening night selection: Ben Rekhi’s documentary “Breaking the Code” will now launch the 24th edition following a shift in the worldwide release date of previously announced opener “Patriot,” directed by Mahesh Narayanan. Co-directed by Rekhi and Swetlana, the U.S.-India co-production receives its world premiere at the festival. The film follows Rekhi as he pieces together his father’s life story – from childhood in post-independence India to a groundbreaking career in Silicon Valley – uncovering a multigenerational account of ambition, displacement and the paths forged by early Indian immigrants in the American technology industry.
The 24th Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles runs April 23-26 at Landmark Sunset Hollywood and Harmony Gold.
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