India’s Yellowstone International Film Festival Returns with 60 Indian Premieres, Supporting Independent Cinema

You might expect to find a cinematic event called the Yellowstone International Film Festival in the northwest corner of Wyoming. But you’d be off – by about seven thousand miles.

This Yellowstone – the festival, not the national park – is based in the pulsating heart of New Delhi, India, with its fifth edition getting underway on Friday. YIFF, which runs through Nov. 20, includes documentary and narrative features and shorts, and programming that reflects a kaleidoscope of films by women, fresh talent and industry-established filmmakers, and a strong representation of stories of people with disabilities and from the LGBTQIA+ community. In a few short years, it has emerged as one of the most prominent film festivals in India, advocating for independent Indian and International cinema.

This year sees the festival expanding to Mumbai — the nerve center of entertainment in India — for its opening night slate. (In addition, YIFF is collaborating on a curated screening of award-winning short films at Soho House, Mumbai, and Gaysi, a Mumbai-based queer organization, will be screening a curated selection of LGBTQIA+ films as part of the film festival).

YIFF is the brainchild of festival founder and director Tushar Tyagi, a filmmaker known for his acclaimed short Saving Chintu. The festival’s 2024 edition boasts a total of 127 official selections, including 14 narrative features, 15 documentary shorts and features, 98 live action short films, and an impressive 60 Indian premieres.

In conversation with Deadline, Tyagi talks about this year’s programming, the reason behind creating the Yellowstone International Film Festival, and future plans for the organization.

DEADLINE: In five short years, you have managed to showcase Indian premieres of some significant films and filmmakers, from India and around the world. Particularly for the 2024 edition you have an impressive and diverse lineup of nonfiction films in the program. Tell us about these films and the curatorial process.

Tushar Tyagi: Thank you for your kind words. Getting the Indian premieres of the kind of feature and short documentaries and other films that we have this year has been very motivating for me and my entire team. I never thought we’d be able to get these kind of films. There is this brilliant documentary from Australia called The Blind Sea. It’s about a surfer who’s visually impaired. In India there isn’t much of a surfing culture. So when we saw the documentary, unanimously everybody was like, this is something that fits in our programming. The film is doing great in the festival circuit. It had its world premiere at Sydney Film Festival and was nominated for the Documentary Australia Award there this year. There is another documentary that’s having its Indian premiere called Celebrating Laughter: The Life and Films of Colin Higgins. It’s by three-time Emmy-winning director Nicholas Eliopoulos, and the film is about Colin Higgins, the American filmmaker who made classics like Nine to Five.

Our programming process is long and thorough. We have industry professionals as our screening committee members from across the globe — watching the submitted films year-round. This year the festival had 2,490 submissions under various categories. The screening members rate every film out of 10 evaluating originality, direction, story, script, cinematography, performances, and production value. Approximately 200 films that score an average of 7 and above are considered for the official selection program. These 200 films are further shortlisted after thoughtful consideration by our jury members, and this year we have a final number of 127 films as our official selection across categories such as International Live Action Shorts, Indian Shorts, International and Indian Documentary Shorts, Narrative and Documentary Features, LGBTQIA+ films, Women Empowerment, and more. Simultaneously, the jury members also vote for the awards from the final 127 films.

DEADLINE: You collaborated with the American Center in New Delhi, the U.S. Embassy’s cultural division in India, and secured four short documentary films to have Indian premieres with subjects ranging from disability, African-American culture, and the American justice system. How did the partnership with the American Center happen and why did you choose to pick these U.S. stories to screen for an Indian audience?

TT: The collaboration with the American Center began last year when they reached out to us looking to partner with a local film festival to create longer programs. This year the American Center wanted to collaborate in a bigger capacity and said they had a slate of American documentaries that they would like to premiere at the festival. There were around 25 documentaries, out of which we chose four that really stood out to us. The Orchestra Chuck Built by Christopher Stoudt, Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, Breaking Silence by Amy Bench and Annie Silverstein, and Soundscape by Timmy O’Neill – these powerful stories, we felt, highlighted the best of American culture and we wanted to bring these documentaries to the Indian audiences.

The entire point of a film festival is about cross culture and bringing other cultures to your country and taking your culture to other countries. So, these four documentaries show – I would say – American culture and lifestyle through a very wide variety of topics to the Indian audience who may have not had a chance to travel abroad. So, when my team and I watched the 25 films, these four definitely stood out when it came to the American perspective.

DEADLINE: You have a good domestic and international programming lineup. What are some of the films you are excited about this year?

TT: There are a number of films in the program we are very excited about. The two documentary features I mentioned earlier, Celebrating Laughter and The Blind Sea. We are very much looking forward to screening the closing night feature narrative, the award-winning Wakhri (One of a Kind) from Pakistan by Iram Parveen Bilal, which is having its Indian premiere with us, having previously screened at prestigious film festivals such as SXSW, Cleveland International Film Festival, Red Sea International Film Festival, and more. Then there is the Korean thriller, Mash Ville that recently won the jury prize for best director at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival and will also have its Indian premiere at the festival. We have some wonderful gems in the shorts narrative program this year such as Tea by Blake Winston Rice, Hema by Ritvik Dhavale that won the audience choice award at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, and the award-winning Resentment which was the best short nominee for the Crystal Bear at the 2024 Berlinale.

In the short documentary program we were fortunate to get Goodbye Turtle/Bye Bye Turtle by Selin Oksuzoglu which was nominated at the Berlinale for the Golden Bear. We also have a big focus on LGBTQ representation and will be showcasing some wonderful shorts such as Sister Wives by Louisa Connolly-Burnham, Night Queen by Naireeta Dasgupta and Dark Spirit by Disha Bhardwaj. And then, of course, the Indian dark comedy feature, Dead Dead Full Dead by Pratul Gaikwad, a cleverly crafted murder mystery that got a collective “yes” to be our opening night feature presentation [in Mumbai].

DEADLINE: Why did you start the Yellowstone International Film Festival and how is it different from other film festivals in India?

TT: I studied filmmaking in New York but nobody in my family is in film. So, when I graduated, it took me a substantial amount of time to find my footing. The only space that I was able to make connections, to move from one project to another, were film festivals. My film [Saving Chintu] traveled to a lot of festivals. It changed my trajectory and my journey, and gave me resources as an indie filmmaker. Over the years I would keep coming back home to Delhi, and I always felt that there was a huge gap – especially in Delhi – of a quality film festival or a festival that was serving independent filmmakers, if we talk about resources and the kind of programming. So back in 2015 I decided if nobody else was coming up with a quality festival in my home city, then I would start that. It took me a couple of years to put the team together. In 2019 we officially started with a very small screening, and we had one filmmaker group from Mumbai who took a masterclass on film direction. We wanted to test waters and it went really well. In 2020, we had the very first year, and now we are in the fifth year.

When you look at how different the festival is – a majority of film festivals in India are run by either entrepreneurs or people who have a limited sense of what a filmmaker or indie filmmaker wants or needs from a film festival. And I, primarily being an indie filmmaker, have had the experience of what I would want from a film festival – what kind of resources I would want, where the gap is, what needs to be elevated. So, using this experience [of mine]we are trying to bridge these gaps at Yellowstone.

DEADLINE: How have you struck a balance between the challenges of a relatively new festival and gaining prominence to reckon with in India?

TT: I would definitely say it’s passion and dedication. Though honestly, the main strength of Yellowstone from day one has been the kind of films we have been able to program that actually resonate with people. Surprisingly enough, there is a huge indie film-loving community in Delhi and in India. A lot of people are not getting to see the kind of films that they would love to watch because at the end of the day, the films that are promoted are Bollywood or Hollywood films. Through the years when we saw that there was a real need for indie films to cater to this huge segment, that gave us the strength and a position to bring in Bollywood names. Even for successful celebrities from Bollywood, when they see that this is a film festival that has its own audience and is attracting international films to India that have been to festivals like Cannes and the Berlinale, they definitely want to be a part of a festival like that. When it comes to international cinema, and what an independent and international film festival in India can offer, everybody’s on the same page.

DEADLINE: Why did you name the film festival “Yellowstone”?

TT: I lived in America for about a decade, and I just love it there. During my stay I traveled extensively and one place that captured my heart and soul was the Yellowstone National Park. I always wanted to start a production company by this name. So, when film festival came into existence and after shortlisting a few names, we decided to go with Yellowstone. As a filmmaker I like a bit of ambiguity, and it could be a pleasant surprise when filmmakers and cinephiles find out that the film festival is actually in New Delhi, India and not in the middle of the woods in Yellowstone National Park in America!

DEADLINE: What are your future plans to give a platform to both documentary and narrative storytellers from India?

TT: We are working on starting a grant program next year with our partners so that we can help filmmakers across the board – documentary, short and narrative feature filmmakers, in a greater capacity because for an indie filmmaker, ideas and scripts just sit on the table if there are no funds or no producers available. And, unfortunately for indie filmmakers, it takes a long time to find the right people who are willing to invest in your project. So, with our partners, we are in discussions that next year we want to create year-round programming screening these [grant funded] films. And hopefully in next five years we’ll hit the mark of having a market at Yellowstone. The future is very bright for independent filmmaking in India but we need to support and amplify stories are needed to be told, and every filmmaker should have resources to tell their stories. And if we at Yellowstone International Film Festival can bridge this gap even a little bit, we’ll be very happy.