MUMBAI: Since its inception in 2011, India Film Project has actively built a community of content creators across varying forms of art. The festival began with a one of a kind 50-hour filmmaking challenge; seven years later, it has evolved into bringing together other forms of art primarily writing, designing and storytelling.

The eighth season of India Film Project aims to be the ultimate destination and platform for writers, storytellers, poets, composers, filmmakers, cinematographers and editors to let their creativity be recognised and thrive. As the festival has promised to be bigger and better this year, 35,000 participants from over 20 countries and 300 cities have already created and submitted over 1700 short films; the highest participation the festival has seen in the last 8 years.

With numerous efforts, India Film Project is now considered as one of the world’s largest conglomeration of content experts and aspiring creative content creators, giving people a chance to learn through each other’s talents and ideas.

The 8th season of the festival will focus on two primary formats:

The revered 50-Hour Filmmaking Challenge will be more aggressive and competitive this year, with over 35,000 filmmakers and 10,000 minutes of short story content to be generated. The theme will be revealed at the beginning of 50 hours on September 28th at 8pm. The categories include Professional Filmmaking, Amateur Filmmaking and Mobile Filmmaking. The winners in the professional and amateur categories of this challenge receive epic DJI Drones.

2. India Film Project Festival: The discussions at the festival will do a deep dive into the 3C’s of content creation:

· Creating ideas, books, music, films or screenplays

· Collaborating through interactive knowledge sharing sessions

· Celebrating curated pieces of content across films, literature, music and digital.

This season also promises an impressive line-up and insightful conversations with names like Bhuvan Bam - one of India’s most popular YouTubers who will talk about the future of comedy in India, celebrated author Ashwin Sanghi will discuss how to effectively tell Indian stories in India, talented filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane and humorous film critic Rajeev Masand will converse on constructive movie criticism, legendary musician Raghu Dixit will share his views on the future of indie music and how the internet works as a catalyst, award winning screenplay writer Juhi Chaturvedi will share her arduous journey laced with tremendous hard-work and perseverance to make a mark in a male dominated industry, and popular columnist Aseem Chhabra will talk about Satyajit Ray’s sci-fi script, Travails with the Alien, something he wrote much before Hollywood produced ET and Close Encounters.