The Illegal, Pratik Gandhi win big at New Jersey Indian & International Film Festival

Director Danish Renzu’s The Illegal won the Best Film Award at the recently concluded New Jersey Indian & International Film Festival (NJIIFF). The filmmaker also bagged the Best Director Award. 

The Illegal sees Suraj Sharma, who is famous for his performance in the Oscar-winning Hollywood film Life Of Pi (2012), play an Indian youngster who migrates to the US to learn filmmaking. However, life in the US turns out to be a far cry from what he had imagined and he is compelled to work in a restaurant to make ends meet. 

Plenty of immigrants in the US want to go home but can’t, says The Illegal director Danish Renzu

Around 40 films, comprising shorts, features and documentaries, from various countries were screened at the three-day festival, which took place online this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Pratik Gandhi, who has been hailed for his take on controversial stockbroker Harshad Mehta in the web-series Scam 1992, won the Best Actor Award for the Gujarati film Dhunki. For her performance in the Malayalam film Kathaah@8, Archana Pradeep won the Best Female Actor Award.

As far as short films are concerned, Joseph Lloyd Lopez and Ashwini Kalsekar won the Best Actor and Best Female Actor Awards for their performances in the film American Hate and Tindey respectively. Tindey also won the Best Short Film Award. Deepak Reddy was given the Best Director Award for his short film Manasanamaha. 

Tindey review: An endearing film about encounters in the dating world

Speaking about how this iteration of the festival differed from previous versions, festival director Hemant Pandya said, “2020 was very tough. Due to the pandemic, we had to postpone our film festival twice. Finally, we took the decision to hold it online and with help of MovieSaints, we were able to pull through. I am going to make sure that NJIIFF gets bigger and better with each passing year.”