Hindi
UFO announces Digital Film Fest
NEW DELHI: New and amateur filmmakers will get an opportunity to showcase their talent in the upcoming digital film festival — UFO 0110 International Digital Film Festival – which is introducing a contest to promote new talent and fresh ideas in the industry.
The festival will be organised from 23 February to 1 March at Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi.
Christened as ‘Film in 6 Days‘, the competition will present a challenge to young filmmakers to direct a short film in a brief span of six days. To facilitate this process and help the participants bring their imagination into life, the organisers will provide all the logistical support to them.
‘Film in six days‘ competition will select six to 10 teams (consisting of director, director of production, and editor) on the basis of their past experience and interviews. The selected candidates will be given a topic by the festival organisers to make a film within six days. These films then will be reviewed by a jury comprising senior people from film fraternity who will select winner will be rewarded with prize money/editing software/equipment.
Festival Director and Ekaa Films founder Madhureeta Anand said, “The six-day competition is an integral and important part of the UFO 0110 International digital Film Festival. It is our way of seeing that budding filmmakers get a chance to make films that on the one hand can be a showcase of their work and on the other hand can be learning experience. For us at the film festival it‘s our way of planting seeds. We hope that these very filmmakers will, in the future, send in films to the festival and add to the viewing experience and quality of the festival.”
Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, Jury member of the last IDFF feels “Digital format of filmmaking is an amazing format that gives you the freedom to shoot things, make a movie, put forth your viewpoint about an issue/agenda etc while overcoming the constraints of inadequate funding or networking etc. It is a wonderful medium for independent voices and certainly more and more people are now open to the idea of digital film making.”
“As a jury member, I have very fond memories of the festival. Even the quality of films churned out by amateur filmmakers/directors such as students or those coming from non- film industry background is very exciting. The technique used by one filmmaker/story teller inadvertently varies with that used by another and this is the surprising element that one comes across fests such as IDFF. Festival like IDFF should be promoted so that maximum talent can be discovered.”
The 0110 International Digital Film Festival is an annual event showcasing cutting edge digital films from around the world. The mission is to take the digital art and film movement forward and provide fresh and innovative content to the viewers and create a space for new styles of form and content that can become the resource pool for filmmakers in South Asia and the rest of the world. It is the only film festival in India that travels to 11 cities.
Hindi
Jio Studios, Sanjay Dutt team up to revive Khal Nayak
Rights acquired for new version, format under wraps as remake plans take shape.
MUMBAI: The villain is back and this time, he’s rewriting his own script. Jio Studios has partnered with Three Dimension Motion Pictures and Aspect Entertainment to revive the 1993 cult classic Khal Nayak, marking a fresh chapter for one of Bollywood’s most iconic anti-hero stories. The original film, directed by Subhash Ghai under Mukta Arts, was a commercial and cultural milestone, with Sanjay Dutt’s portrayal of Ballu becoming one of Hindi cinema’s most memorable performances.
Dutt, along with Aksha Kamboj, has now acquired the rights from the original creators, bringing on board Jio Studios and its President Jyoti Deshpande to steer the project creatively.
While the exact format whether remake, sequel, prequel, or a completely new narrative remains undisclosed, the collaboration aims to reinterpret the story for contemporary audiences while retaining the essence that made the original a defining film of the 1990s.
The move taps into a broader industry trend of reviving legacy intellectual property, particularly characters with strong recall value. “Khal Nayak” was notable for pushing mainstream Hindi cinema into morally grey territory at a time when heroes were largely one-dimensional, making Ballu’s character a standout.
The project also marks the film production debut of Aspect Entertainment, signalling a push towards more technology-led storytelling frameworks. Meanwhile, Jio Studios continues to expand its slate, having built a library of over 200 films and series, with more than 60 titles collectively winning 500-plus awards.
For Dutt, the revival is as much personal as it is strategic, a return to a role that reshaped his career. For the industry, it is another sign that nostalgia, when paired with scale, remains a powerful box-office proposition.
Because in Bollywood, some villains never fade, they just wait for the perfect comeback.
