IFP (formerly India Film Project) is a multi-disciplinary creative and cultural festival held annually in Mumbai, India. The event is renowned for its six 50 Hour time-bound challenges and a subsequent two-day multi-stage festival.
The festival's hallmark is its 50 Hour challenges, attracting participants from over 42 countries. These challenges include the 50 Hour Filmmaking Challenge, 50 Hour Music Challenge, 50 Hour Design Challenge, 50 Hour Photography Challenge, 50 Hour Writing Challenge, and 50 Hour Performing Arts Challenge. The 50 Hour Filmmaking Challenge, launched in 2011, is the oldest and flagship competition. In 2024, the challenges drew over 53,000 participants worldwide.
Following the completion of the challenges, the festival culminates in a two-day event in Mumbai. This gathering features prominent figures across various domains, including film, music, literature, digital media, audio & podcasting, design & visual art, photography, performing arts, advertising, gaming, technology, and culture, who engage with audiences through interactive sessions.[1][2]
History
IFP was started by Ritam Bhatnagar in 2011 as the Ahmedabad Film Project, a filmmaking competition for local filmmakers. In 2013 it was renamed the India Film Project, admitting entrants from other countries from 2014. The 14th edition held in October 2024 received entries from over 550 cities and 43 countries. In 2022, the festival was renamed as 'IFP' owing to festival expanding horizons from films to other creative domains such as digital, literature & writing, OTT, storytelling, visual art, performing arts, audio and podcasting, photography, gaming, tech and culture.
Season 1
The first Ahmedabad Film Project in 2011 received 86 entries from 18 cities. Filmmaker Sanjay Gadhvi was the jury member. More than 600 filmmakers participated in the event.[3] The theme for the filmmaking competition was 'Small things in life'.[4] As founder Ritam says, "The motive of beginning this festival was to attract people towards filmmaking, considered a niche hobby back then". "The festival was meant to be a one-time activity, but the response was too good to make it an annual happening" he adds.
Season 2
IFP 2012 Jury Members Vikramaditya Motwane, Komal Nahta and Rajesh Mapuskar
The 2012 Edition saw more than 1200 filmmakers, 120 teams from 24 cities across India, competing against each other to win the title of Best Film. Well-known Filmmakers like Shoojit Sircar, Vikramaditya Motwane, Rajesh Mapuskar and Komal Nahta were part of the jury.[5] The theme 'Ingredients of Good Living' caught well with the filmmakers with some of the best films coming out of the competition.
Season 3
The 2013 Edition of India Film Project saw as many as 4200+ filmmakers from 40 cities across India and neighbouring countries. The film project went online by allowing participants to shoot films from their own cities and uploading online. The project extended their filmmaking hours from 48 hours to 50 hours. The project kicked off on 20 September 2014. Versatile and award-winning filmmakers like Tigmanshu Dhulia, Nikhil Advani and Bejoy Nambiar served as the jury members. For the first time in India, an online film festival was a part of 2013 edition in association with NFDC, which allowed everyone to watch their favourite films online on their computer screen.[6] The winning films of 2013 edition received amazing response such that they were selected for Jaipur International Film Festival for special screening.[7]
Season 4
IFP 2014 winner along with Jury Hansal Mehta and Omung Kumar
The 2014 edition of IFP was announced on 28 May. The festival claimed to reach out to filmmakers from smaller towns and other countries through previous year's winning film screenings. The official trailer of 2014 edition was revealed on 4 June, which featured a military theme. The trailer was shot with extensive use of VFX and sent out the message 'Shoot before you get shot'.[8]
More than 8500 filmmakers participated in the edition from 85 cities across the world, mostly India, Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan, Indonesia, Dubai, USA and UK. Almost 500 films were made in the challenge over the 50 hours beginning on 12 September 2014.[10]
Season 5
Audiences at the fifth edition of IFP
The 2015 edition of IFP took the wings off festival to make it truly international. More than 14000 filmmakers are said to participate in this edition from 18 countries. The fifth season was announced on 15 May 2015 and the trailer was released on 15 June. The 2015 trailer was shot using a technique called visual illusion and garnered huge popularity amongst participants.[11]
IFP 2015 Winner Vijay Velukutty receiving trophy from Jury Ketan Mehta, Guneet Monga and Raja Sen.
The festival lined up some very prominent faces of Bollywood who came forward as jury members. Two times National award winners Ketan Mehta and Onir along with film critic Raja Sen took up the mammoth task of judging 700+ films. The festival also saw its first female jury member Guneet Monga who was much appraised by the festival fans.[12]
The festival saw participation from south Indian states such as Telangana, AP, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Apart from India, participation was seen from USA, UK, Germany, Singapore, Dubai, Australia, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Pakistan, Malaysia and other countries. The filmmaking hours started on 18 September and ended on 20 September.[citation needed]
IFP 2016 was the festival's first edition to be held outside Ahmedabad. The festival officially moved to Mumbai as its new home ground. The 50-hour filmmaking competition saw more than 23,600 filmmakers who took part and made 1,220 films over the weekend. The theme announced was 'Top of the World'. The jury for the festival was Madhur Bhandarkar, Nagesh Kukunoor, Sriram Raghavan and southern super director Vetrimaaran. A good number of teams also participated from China, Dubai, US, and 16 more countries.
More than 8,000 film enthusiasts at IFP 2016
The grand finale held on 1 October at Mumbai.
Kanan Gill lead a conversation on 'How not to make a film' where he took the audience view of content creation. East India Comedy was represented by Sorabh Pant, Angad Singh and Azeem Banatwala, seen conversing with Raja Sen about importance of giving offence. Nikhil Taneja from Y-Films along with Anupama Chopra, Nidhi Bisht and Sameer Saxena from The Viral Fever conversed about the anatomy of making and distributing a web-series, a rather new form of content for youngsters. Karan Talwar and Anisha Rickshawalli joined Raja Sen in discussing about Split Personality on screen. Apart from conversations, the day also included a workshop on short storytelling and short filmmaking conducted by Terribly Tiny Tales and a screening of popular web films by Pocket Films.
The evening also saw Sumeet Vyas, Nidhi Singh of Permanent Roommates fame, Naveen Kasturia, Maanvi Gagroo and Amol Parashar from The Viral Fever. The event was hosted by RJ Megha, Malishka RJ and Rishi Kapoor. The event was attended by over 8,000 film enthusiasts from around the country.
The 2017 festival was held at Nehru Center in Mumbai on 30 September and 1 October. More than 29,000 filmmakers from 18 countries participated in the 50-hour challenge, creating over 1,503 films, each of them 4 to 6 minutes, on the theme 'Everything is connected' over a weekend. The jury for the seventh edition of the festival was Ram Madhvani, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and Vipul Amrutlal Shah.
The 'Best of Digital' awards for YouTube videos were introduced with 5,512 nominations in 7 categories. Two other challenges added to festival were a Short scriptwriting challenge that was executed in association with Terribly Tiny Tales and a Poster Design challenge in association with The Souled Store.
Ashutosh Gowariker in conversation with RJ Megha
The festival had 16,000 visitors attending conversations, workshops and screenings. The Viral Fever's new web-series called Inmates had its premiere at the festival, five days before its official launch.
IFP Season 8 saw over 32,000 filmmakers participating and producing 1,550 short films in a duration of 50 hours. The eighth season saw participation from over 300 cities and 30 countries, with teams coming in from USA, UK, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, Dubai, Germany, China, France and more. This was the first time that IFP declared separate theme for each of its categories, namely Professional, Amateur and Mobile. The jury for the 50 Hour Filmmaking Challenge were Sudhir Mishra, Milan Luthria and RS Prasanna.
The festival also saw three challenges: Poster Design Challenge for designers, Short Scriptwriting Challenge for writers and Voice Your Words Challenge for Storytellers.
IFP Season 9, held in September–October timelines, saw over 36,000 filmmakers participating and producing 1,710 short films in a duration of 50 hours. The participation came from 320 cities and 18 countries, with teams from USA, UK, Australia, Turkey, Dubai, Singapore and many more. The jury for the Challenge were Abhishek Chaubey, Anjani Menon, Pan Nalin and Pradeep Sarkar.
The festival also saw participation across Scriptwriting Challenge, Storytelling Challenge and Design Challenge. The winning stories from Storytelling Challenge were later converted in to audiobooks. The winning posters from the Design Challenge are being merchandised and sold to larger audiences across India.[citation needed]
IFP Season 10 saw over 53,000 unique creators participate across challenges and over 27,000 creators attend the 4 day virtual festival.[14] Festival Director Ritam Bhatnagar quoted "Season 10 was nothing short of a miracle. To pull off a festival with over 65,000 unique creators in challenges and virtual festival amidst times when most festivals were getting cancelled has been our feat in itself[15]". The participation came from 343 cities and 23 countries.
The 50 Hour Filmmaking saw approximately 38,000 filmmakers participate and create 1804 short films over a weekend. The festival also introduced a 50 Hour Music Challenge, one of its kind which saw 1,200 original tracks made by 11,000 participating musicians from across 7 countries. The festival saw surge in participation across Scriptwriting, Storytelling and Design Challenge.
Amidst the covid chaos, the organisers decided to continue season 11 as a virtual festival. The season saw over 65,000 unique creators participate across the 5 creative challenges and over 29,000 creators attend the 4 day virtual festival, held from 21 to 24 October 2021. The festival saw participation from over 417 cities and 31 unique countries, making it one of the most widely spread participation.
Flagship 50 Hour Filmmaking Challenge saw 32,300 filmmakers creating 1,527 short films from 24 to 26 Sep 2021. The 50 Hour Music Challenge in its second edition saw over 11,600 musicians from over 11 countries creating 1,087 tracks across Pop, Hip Hop, Folk Fusion, Electronic and Rock genres.
The 7 Day Storytelling, Writing and Design challenges were further bifurcated to include poetry, short stories, digital illustrations and digital collages respectively.
The festival came back with its on-ground run after two years virtually. The season saw over 56,500 creators participate across 7 creative challenges, with two additional challenges being introduced - the 50 Hour Photography Challenge and 7 Day Standup Challenge. The 2 day festival was attended by over 13,750 creators at Mumbai, held on October 7 and 8, 2022. The participation came from 378 cities and 39 countries.
IFP Season 14 introduced new elements, including the Mono Act category under the Performing Arts Challenge and the transformation of its 7-day challenges into 50-hour formats. The two-day festival, held on October 12–13, 2024, in Mumbai, attracted an audience of over 15,310 attendees.[citation needed]
In collaboration with Intel, IFP achieved a Guinness World Record for "The most number of AI-generated images uploaded to a bespoke website in one hour."[citation needed] The 14th season was supported by major sponsors, including Intel, ITC Bingo, Royal Stag, Jameson, and Sennheiser.
Labs
Web Writers' Lab
In 2018, IFP started an exclusive lab for writers in web domain along with Pocket Aces. The lab saw over 1200 applications and 10 selected writers underwent a seven-day residential program at Mumbai. The lab was mentored by leading writers from Indian web content ecosystem including Dhruv Sehgal.[18]
In 2020, the second season of lab took place in middle of pandemic, receiving more than 2000 applications for a 5-day virtual residency program.
Podcast Lab
In 2021, IFP partnered with Spotify and Anchor to create India's first lab for podcasters, a 25 week long program to mentor and handhold aspiring podcasters for producing their first season. The lab saw over 1200 applicants and 200 podcasters from 63 cities were selected as a part of first batch after a thorough interview process. The lab included mentors like Anupama Chopra, Varun Duggirala, Mantra, Chhavi Sachdev, Kedar Nimkar, Mayank Shekhar, Joshua Thomas and many more.
50 Hour Challenges
50 Hour Filmmaking Challenge
Started in 2011, 50 Hour Filmmaking Challenge is IFP's flagship challenge that has seen over 1.85 Lakh filmmakers participate in last 11 years. The challenge is one of the largest filmmaking challenge in the world, with participation from all 5 continents. Participants can choose to participate across Professional, Amateur or Mobile category depending on their experience and equipment usage. In 2015, the challenge was made open to films made in all languages. The winning films from the challenge were broadcast on MTV India in IFP's official show called IFP Shorts.[19]
Added in 2020, the concept according to organisers was derived from already existing rule of creating original music in the 50 Hour Filmmaking Challenge.[20] The challenge has 5 genres that participants can choose from, namely Pop, Rock, Hip Hip, Folk Fusion and Electronic. The musicians are required to create original piece of music in just 50 hours on a given theme, which is later judged by pre-jury and jury.
Running since 2017, the challenge was initially launched as a poster design challenge, inviting designers to recreate movie posters on a given theme within 7 days. In 2020, an additional category of Fan Art was added to the challenge. Owing to huge participation in 2020 and continuous demand for adding even more categories, Digital Illustrations and Digital Collage were additionally added in 2021. In 2022, a UI/UX category was also added on popular demand, and 'Brand book' category in 2023.
In 2024, the challenge was re-packaged to 50 Hour Design Challenge and a new category called 'AI Art' was added.
Year
Theme
Participants
Jury
2017
Minimal Poster
628
Raj Khatri
2018
Minimal Poster
871
Raj Khatri
2019
Contemporary Modern Day poster for Old Films made between 1970 and 1999
1286
Raj Khatri
2020
Fan Art - Rebel (Choose a respectful and recognizable or fictional Rebellious figure)
Poster Art - Crossover Poster between any two movies, two shows, two books or two music album.
Poster and Cover Art - Convert a movie poster into a book cover or music album art.
Fan Art - Re-create any iconic pop-culture moment in the last decade of your favourite public figure
Digital Illustration - Re-create your Happy Place with you in it
Brand Book - Create a brand for your favourite Creators Clothing line
UI/UX - A disaster management app that helps you cope up with any ongoing disaster, based on your location it prepares you and gives you a checklist to do if you get stuck in a disaster.
Introduced in 2017, the challenge has been participated by over 11,000 writers in last 6 years. Initially, the challenge saw only short scriptwriting as an accepted format. However, owing to challenge's popularity amongst writers across the world, a short story category was later added in 2021 and Think Piece category in 2022.
In 2024, the challenge was re-packaged to 50 Hour Writing Challenge and a new category called 'Mini Series' was added.
Previously known as 7 Day Storytelling challenge, it was brought to light in 2018 with spoken word as its only category. In 2021, poetry was added since organisers felt both were active form of performing arts expressions. In last 5 years, over 7,100 performers have participated actively from over 19 countries with major participation coming in English and Hindi languages.
In 2024, the challenge was re-packaged to 50 Hour Performing Arts Challenge and a new category called 'Mono Acting' was added.
This challenge was introduced in 2022, to enable photographers to participate in a time-bound manner. The debut challenge year saw over 1,000+ participating photographers from 4 countries.
In 2024, the challenge format was changed to one new theme every ten hours
Seeing the national standup scene grown exponentially, and yet lack of platforms for comics that could catapult them nationally, the challenge was introduced as a community voted initiative. The debut challenge year saw over 800 comics from 14 year olds to 62 years olds, participate.
